I can't get Ubuntu (12.10 Desktop) to recognize my Galaxy S3

Question

I Plug my gs3 into my laptop, and nothing happens. I went to terminal, typed "lsusb" command, and the return print was, for one of the usb ports, "Bus 002 Device 015: ID 04e8:6860 Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd GT-I9100 Phone [Galaxy S II], GT-P7500 [Galaxy Tab 10.1]". My device is neither the S2 or the Galaxy tab. Any ideas on how to get this working?

Solution

Possible solution(s) discussed here:

OMG! Ubuntu > Connect your Android Ice Cream Sandwich Phone to Ubuntu for File Access

As explained by Google Engineer Dan Morrill, the USB mass storage protocol was a block-level protocol. What this meant was that a partition could not be mounted on two different systems at the same time. Each partition that needs to be mounted on a computer must be unmounted from the phone first. This would be impossible on a phone with only a single partition, since if the system partition was unmounted, the phone would crash.

To work around this issue, Android phones up until now either had two partitions in the internal memory (like the Nexus S) or had a microSD slot (like the Samsung Galaxy S II). Phones with micro-SD slots would just export the microSD card partitions to the connected computer.

But the Galaxy Nexus only has a single internal partition. Other Ice Cream Sandwich phones in the future are likely to follow suit. ..

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UPDATE

Lengthy discussion, and possible udev rules to fix this issue, in this forum:

OpenSuse.org > Cannot connect Samsung Galaxy S3 (Android 4) via USB cable

That's because it needs a udev rule

Can you plug the device in and then run the command dmesg, then post the output for your device (in code tags), which should be the last ~10 entries. I can then add a udev rule to my package and update for you.

Once you have the updated package, you need to mount like; [CODE] mkdir ~/galaxy jmtpfs -o allow_other ~/galaxy

To unmount use; fusermount -u ~/galaxy [CODE] There is a man page, use man jmtpfs

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UPDATE 2

A better explanation and suggested configuration (Nov 2011), so may be slightly outdated.

Ice Cream Sandwich explained: MTP - what is it, why use it, and how to set it up

MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) first showed up as default on Android devices with Honeycomb. It's a bit of a change from the normal USB Mass Storage (UMS) file transfer that we're used to, where you plug in your phone, hit "USB mode" and start moving files. And because it's become the standard in Ice Cream Sandwich on the Galaxy Nexus, it's time to have a look at it. Hit the break where we see what it is, why we're using it, and how to set it up on your computer for easy file transfer.

On a Linux install, things aren't quite as easy. On the plus side you have a bit of control how things are mounted, but there's no one click solution. Don't be discouraged, you can have MTP set up and running in no time with a bit of terminal command fun. Here's a walkthrough for using the Galaxy Nexus with Ubuntu:

Set up a UDEV rule via the terminal by opening the rules file ..

Will test this soon myself ..

Comments

[tommyk]

Possible duplicate of askubuntu.com/questions/146529/…

[david6]

Possible duplicate of: askubuntu.com/questions/186681/…

[david6]

Can confirm USB ID 04e8:6860 is returned for (all of): i9100 (Galaxy S2), i9300 (Galaxy S3), and GT-P7500 (Galaxy Tab 10.1).

[david6]

None of possible duplicates have definitive answer. Will investigate further ..

[david6]

The SSHDroid app (using WiFi) works remarkably well, when I tested with Galaxy Tab 2 7.0. I haven't yet tried to find best solution for USB connectivity.

[Christopher Torok]

so would it work to just unmount my sd card in my phone and THEN try plugging it in to ubuntu?

[david6]

That should work fine. As would disabling MTP, photo-share, etc. (not sure how to), and reverting to USB-storage mode.

[Christopher Torok]

i called samsung yesterday, and they said they said that the mtp protocol included with 4.0 and above is incompatible with linux. now here's my idea, would installing the gs3 windows driver on wine work?

[david6]

I have tried (all of) libmtp + fuse, mtpfs, and go-mtpfs type solutions. These are either not stable (for i8190 S3 Mini), or non operative (for P3110 Tab2 7.0). So, I'm back to using SSHDroid (play.google.com/store/apps/…), which works fine (over WiFi).

[Christopher Torok]

so, as it stands, theres not really a way to get an android device working like it should in ubuntu?

[david6]

It would appear so, for Android 4.x (Ice Cream Sandwich) and particularly for Samsung devices.