MTP Support in Fedora

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Sat, 2012-09-22 at 14:45 +0100, Dave Cross wrote:
> I can't be the only person with this problem.
> 
> I have a Nexus 7. The Nexus runs Android Jellybean. Recent versions of
> Android (like Jellybean) have removed support for USB mass storage and
> the Nexus now connect to my Fedora 17 desktop using MTP.
> 
> This seems to be a problem as MTP support in Fedora (perhaps in Linux
> in general) appears to be appalling. I have libmtp installed and up to
> date. When I plug in the Nexus, both RhythmBox sees it and claim to
> display the music found on it. But it doesn't find the MP3s I've
> downloaded using the Amazon MP3 application. Banshee doesn't detect
> the Nexus at all.
> 
> I've seen talk of something called "mtpfs", but that doesn't seem to
> be available from the Fedora repos. Another app called gMTP sounds
> like it might be useful, but is also not available for Fedora.
> 
> Has anyone else found a way round this problem? Is anyone packaging
> mtpfs or gMTP for Fedora?

This has been asked a couple of times here. I haven't had much luck with
mtpfs either (I just compiled it from source). Clearly a properly
working libmtp is what is needed and unfortunately I don't see any
mention of such a thing in the F18 Proposed Features list.

However a workaround for many use cases is to install an FTP or sftp
server on the device - there are several in the Play store - and either
use a basic FTP client from Linux or just mount the server from Nautilus
and use drag-and-drop. Be careful though. Doing this with a large group
of files at once seems to give random dropouts.

Very recently I started using Airdroid on my GNexus phone under Jelly
Bean. It's basically a specialized website running on the phone and
talking over Wifi, with file transfers plus some other features. We'll
see how it works out.

poc