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?
2 Answers
I gave up trying to get MTP support on Linux for the moment.
Here is the solution I use now:
- On your Android device, install FTP Server (it's free and open source)
- On your Ubuntu computer, install Filezilla
- Make sure both your computer and your Android device are connected to the same WiFi network
- On Android, launch FTP Server, and check "Running". It will provide you an IP and a port.
- 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)
- 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)
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Nice solution. I wish I knew about FTP server earlier. Now I use almost exclusively Bitorrent Sync to do that. It works quite well on linux and is ideal for very large files.– TKruggDec 21, 2013 at 15:15
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-1 completely insecure - the app doesn't support encryption at all. I haven't tried it, but it looks like Primitve FTPd supports SSL.– l0b0Oct 6, 2015 at 17:25
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1I gave up on MTP because the transfer rate is so unreasonably slow, thanks Microsoft.– mchidNov 14, 2015 at 3:36
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2@l0b0 -1 seems harsh. This is a perfectly valid solution on a secure private Wifi network. (+1)– SparhawkJan 19, 2016 at 22:14
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1Installed ES File Explorer & Used Remote Management to Copy files to device via FTP.– imbayagoApr 25, 2016 at 14:36
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.
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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 Jan 13, 2013 at 20:13
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1gMTP may work for other phones similar but the S3 was unable to connect even after using
Run $ mtp-detect
Jan 14, 2013 at 20:46 -
1Just 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.– AvieRoseFeb 28, 2013 at 16:48
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1Doesn'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".– CerinSep 24, 2014 at 13:16 -
5Correction. 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"?– CerinSep 24, 2014 at 13:20