phone no longer mounts over usb

[Craig White]

On Mon, 2013-08-05 at 11:09 +0100, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> On Mon, 2013-08-05 at 10:28 +0800, Gregory Hosler wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > I have a Samsong phone. I used to mount it as Mass Storage (selected on the
> > phone) over the micro usb connection, to copy files to/from.
> > 
> > Starting with kernel 3.10.3-300.fc19.x86_64, and continuing with kernel
> > 3.10.4-300.fc19.x86_64 this no longer works.
> > 
> > Relevant snippets from /var/log/messages under both kernels attached.
> > 
> > I will bugzilla, but I wish to know whether anyone else has seen this change
> > of behavior.
> 
> Presumably this is Android, but which version? If it's 4.x, stock
> Android doesn't support direct mass storage access (unless you root it).
> This has been the case for over a year and is unrelated to the Linux
> kernel on your machine. You're supposed to use MTP, for which there are
> several apps in the Fedora repos, e.g. simple-mtpfs. Just don't expect
> it to be a substitute for a real filesystem (no random access for one
> thing).
> 
> Or use wireless access via FTP, SSH, Rsync etc., for which there are
> apps in the Google Play Store.
----
In the interest of accuracy...

Android phones with SD cards do support usb storage - that's actually
how SD cards work on android phones. USB storage on Android phones
actually unmounts the SD card on the phone so you can mount it on your
computer. 

The built-in memory is not accessible via usb storage and phones like
the Nexus 4 which don't have an SD card slot can only be accessed
directly using MTP. The built-in memory cannot be unmounted on a
telephone so usb storage isn't an option for this storage area - that's
why you need to use MTP which allows simultaneous access to both the
phone and the host computer.

The nicest/cleanest solution if you can't get MTP to work is to use
something like WiFi Explorer which essentially runs a WebDAV type server
on your phone which you access with a web browser on your desktop and
you can get file/folder access and file transfer ability rather simply.
Personally, I think this is a much better solution than MTP tether cable
anyway.

Craig


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