How to get the Samsung Galaxy S5 to work with MTP on Debian 9?

Question

So I'm trying to share files between the Samsung Galaxy S5 with Android and my Debian9/KDE machine using MTP instead of KDE Connect.

The problem is that I keep getting:

The process for the mtp protocol died unexpectedly.

When trying to copy over files.

It also often says

No Storages found. Maybe you need to unlock your device?

I can view some of the phone's contents in dolphin after trying for a while: pressing "Allow" whenever the dialog on the phone asks for it while trying to open it in dolphin which correctly detects it as Samsung Galaxy S5.

I once could successfully copy over a bunch of images.

I already tried sudo apt-get install --reinstall libmtp-common. syslog has things like the following:

usb 1-5: usbfs: process 7907 (mtp.so) did not claim interface 0 before use
usb 1-5: reset high-speed USB device number 35 using xhci_hcd
usb 1-5: usbfs: process 7909 (mtp.so) did not claim interface 0 before use
colord-sane: io/hpmud/pp.c 627: unable to read device-id ret=-1
usb 1-5: USB disconnect, device number 35
usb 1-5: new high-speed USB device number 36 using xhci_hcd
usb 1-5: usbfs: process 7930 (mtp.so) did not claim interface 0 before use
usb 1-5: usbfs: process 7930 (mtp.so) did not claim interface 0 before use
usb 1-5: usbfs: process 7930 (mtp.so) did not claim interface 0 before use

Solution

Install the jmtpfs package

apt install jmtpfs

Edit your /etc/fuse.conf as follows

# Allow non-root users to specify the allow_other or allow_root mount options.

user_allow_other

Create an udev rule. Use lsusb or mtp-detect to get the ID of your device

nano /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules

with the following line:

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="04e8", ATTR{idProduct}=="6860", MODE="0666", OWNER="[username]"

Replace 04e8 and 6860 with yours , then run:

udevadm control --reload

Reconnect your device , open the terminal and run:

mkdir ~/mtp
jmtpfs ~/mtp
ls ~/mtp

sample output:

Card  Phone

To unmount your device use the following command:

fusermount -u ~/mtp

Also you can use the go-mtpfs tool:

Mount MTP devices over FUSE

mkdir ~/mtp
go-mtpfs ~/mtp

A graphical tool to mount your device : gmtp:

simple file transfer program for MTP based devices

sudo apt install gmtp
gmtp

kio-mtp

access to MTP devices for applications using the KDE Platform

Comments

[kmacdonald]

The problem with MTP is that some phones, perhaps especially those from Samsung, implement MTP in incompatible ways. Some comments (and links) from another samsung-device-related question on this site may be useful. And GAD3R's answer is worth a try too (jmtpfs).

[Gilberto]

You can not forget: "the device's screen needs to be unlocked (for security reasons)". That's the point!

[mYnDstrEAm]

Great - thank you; but is there also a way to do this without having to add 'user_allow_other' to /etc/fuse.conf (for security)?

[mYnDstrEAm]

I really would love to mark your answer as the solution but it simply does not work for me. I hence had to use KDE Connect. After having to rerun commands many times I get errors incl: jmtpfs ~/mtp2 ignoring libusb_claim_interface() = -6PTP_ERROR_IO: failed to open session, trying again after resetting USB interface LIBMTP libusb: Attempt to reset device ls: cannot access '/home/username/mtp': Input/output error fusermount: failed to unmount /home/username/mtp: Device or resource busy. Once ls ~/mtp showed the right thing and once I could view the files on the SD card in dolphin.

[AmirHossein Rezaei]

use jmtpfs /tmp/myphone instead of mounting in ~/mtp, if you got "bad mount point error"