While Ubuntu does many things well out of the box, being able to recognize Android devices connected by USB is not one of them. Instead the devices have to be added by manually editing the rules of the USB subsystem. Luckily, this is easy to fix.
First you need to determine the right ID for your device (you can find a list of the most common vendor IDs at the end of this post).
Next, using your favourite editor as root edit (or create) "/etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules” and add this line:
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="<your vendor's four character id>", MODE="0666"
Save the file and exit the editor, then set the permissions of the file and restart the udev system:
$ sudo chmod a+rx /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules $ sudo restart udev udev start/running, process xxxx
Plug in your Android device and turn on USB storage. Your SD card will now be mounted just like any other USB drive in Ubuntu. An easy fix!
Android Company Vendor IDs
From the Android Developers vendor id list:
| Company | Vendor ID |
|---|---|
| Acer | 0502 |
| ASUS | 0b05 |
| Dell | 413c |
| Foxconn | 0489 |
| Fujitsu | 04c5 |
| Fujitsu Toshiba | 04c5 |
| Garmin-Asus | 091e |
18d1 |
|
| Hisense | 109b |
| HTC | 0bb4 |
| Huawei | 12d1 |
| K-Touch | 24e3 |
| KT Tech | 2116 |
| Kyocera | 0482 |
| Lenovo | 17ef |
| LG | 1004 |
| Motorola | 22b8 |
| NEC | 0409 |
| Nook | 2080 |
| Nvidia | 0955 |
| OTGV | 2257 |
| Pantech | 10a9 |
| Pegatron | 1d4d |
| Philips | 0471 |
| PMC-Sierra | 04da |
| Qualcomm | 05c6 |
| SK Telesys | 1f53 |
| Samsung | 04e8 |
| Sharp | 04dd |
| Sony | 054c |
| Sony Ericsson | 0fce |
| Teleepoch | 2340 |
| Toshiba | 0930 |
| ZTE | 19d2 |
If your device is not listed, you can determine your vendor ID using the lsusb command:
$ sudo lsusb Bus 010 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 006 Device 002: ID 047f:d055 Plantronics, Inc. Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 010: ID 0bb4:0c02 High Tech Computer Corp. Bus 002 Device 004: ID 046d:c505 Logitech, Inc. Cordless Mouse+Keyboard Receiver Bus 002 Device 003: ID 046d:0809 Logitech, Inc. Bus 002 Device 002: ID 05e3:0608 Genesys Logic, Inc. USB-2.0 4-Port HUB
If you can’t tell which entry is for your Android device, run lsusb once with the phone connected and once without and the entry that appears in one list but not the other will be the one you’re looking for. In this instance, the connected Android device is an HTC G1 (aka Dream), so the vendor ID is 0bb4.
Note: for some devices, such as the latest Kindle Fire on Ubuntu 12.04, you’ll need to install the MTPFS libraries and create a directory to mount the SD card as the devices use a different interface method:
$ sudo apt-get install mtpfs $ mkdir ~/KindleFire $ mtpfs ~/KindleFire $ nautilus ~/KindleFire &
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