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I have an Android phone (Samsung Galaxy S3) and I wish to take the music files I have off of it and store them on my laptop which is running Ubuntu 12.10. Upon connecting my phone to my computer I can see the phone but if I try to open it to view it's contents I receive an error saying that my device was not mounted. Is there any quick fix which will allow me to take music and other files from my phone to store them on my computer?

BuZZ-dEE
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John Dream
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2 Answers2

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I gave up trying to get MTP support on Linux for the moment.

Here is the solution I use now:

  1. On your Android device, install FTP Server (it's free and open source)
  2. On your Ubuntu computer, install Filezilla
  3. Make sure both your computer and your Android device are connected to the same WiFi network
  4. On Android, launch FTP Server, and check "Running". It will provide you an IP and a port.
  5. In Filezilla, connect to yoru Android device using these information, and ftp/ftp as login/password (you can change this in FTP Server if you want)
  6. You can then navigate into your device from your Ubuntu computer! I usually use this to transfer music on my Android Samsung Galaxy S3 (I put it in /storage/extSdCard/ directory)
Pierre
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This android version uses MTP (Multimedia Transfer Protocol) and PTP (Picture Transfer Protocol). Ubuntu doesn't come with MTP support installed. Install gMTP and you can transfer the files.

Demis
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  • Sweet, and that seems like exactly what I was looking for especially beacuse I didnt have this issue when in the PTP usb mode – John Dream Jan 13 '13 at 20:13
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    gMTP may work for other phones similar but the S3 was unable to connect even after using Run $ mtp-detect – John Dream Jan 14 '13 at 20:46
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    Just tried this myself with a Samsung Galaxy S2 to no avail. Kept having to force quit. In the end I transferred the desired items to memory card and plugged that into the computers card reader. Bit long winded but it works. – AvieRose Feb 28 '13 at 16:48
  • gMTP is ok with nexus4 – abernier Apr 05 '13 at 21:05
  • What about cloud storage? Dropbox is probably the most popular, Ubuntu One also has an android app; personally, I use SpiderOak (but I heard that its android app is not very good - I didn't test it myself, though, and generally I found SpiderOak superior to Dropbox). – mbork Apr 05 '13 at 23:59
  • gMTP also worked for me with a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 - but only after updating libmtp to the latest version per these instructions: http://www.humans-enabled.com/2011/12/how-to-fix-samsung-galaxy-nexus-mtp.html – del Jun 01 '13 at 12:55
  • This worked for me. Thanks - Here is the command: sudo aptitude install mtp-tools mtpfs gmtp – Sileria Aug 06 '13 at 06:17
  • Working with Nexus 5 – Yehonatan Tsirolnik Jun 18 '14 at 18:33
  • gMTP also works in Ubuntu 14.04 with Lenovo s650 phone with a small action: I had to upgrade some libraries from ppa:langdalepl/gvfs-mtp and now I can access and download phone content in gMTP. – conualfy Jul 06 '14 at 13:53
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    Doesn't work for me with an HTC One. Never detects the device. Running mtp-detect gives me the error "PTP_ERROR_IO: failed to open session, trying again after resetting USB interface". – Cerin Sep 24 '14 at 13:16
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    Correction. gMTP does technically work, but is so horribly slow as to be unusable. It takes about a minute for every connect/browse/add/delete action to run. Why in the world did Android abandon the USB storage device interface that was blazing fast and "just worked"? – Cerin Sep 24 '14 at 13:20
  • @Cerin I believe it is because directly mounting the filesystem can cause apps to crash or unmount if any files are in use. Still, it seems like that would be a much better trade-off in my opinion. – mchid Nov 14 '15 at 03:40
  • @Cerin I can confirm this. HTC One is a pain to use with Ubuntu. – imrek Mar 23 '17 at 15:32