Mount Internal Storage in Ubuntu

**JR8203** · 03-05-2011 07:32 PM

First, I didn't know if this should go in development or general since most of the people who are going to be on Ubuntu will be devs, but hopefully this will be useful for everyone.

Honeycomb changed a lot of things. Most of the changes are awesome (as we know) but some of them have made certain things frustrating. Honeycomb marked the move from USB Mass Storage to MTP (media transfer protocol). Although for Windows users it actually works pretty well, for Linux users it doesn't...at least at first.

If anyone has hooked up their Xoom to a Ubuntu box then they know at first nothing happens. There is no selection on the tab to "mount" USB Mass Storage because it is not supported (which I thought Honeycomb was supposed to support both so this may change) It's like the computer doesn't even recognize anything is plugged in.

So this was very frustrating but I have put together a solution. Previously I was using a GUI interface called gMTP to connect to the Xoom and transfer files. This was an ok solution and it worked but I would still rather just use it in Nautilus like every other drive I use. Ok so starting here I will just post the commands and then explain after so no code gets lost.

Start with installing a needed program for all of this to work

Code:

sudo apt-get install mtpfs

Next we will create the device rules, so Ubuntu recognizes it as a USB device.

Code:

sudo gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules

NOTE: Some of you may have already added the Vendor ID. If you don't this file will start off blank and then you need to add this next line. If it does not come up blank, then make sure you have a line with Vendor ID 22b8 and you are all set.

Code:

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="22b8", MODE="0666"

make the mount point and take ownership:

Code:

sudo mkdir /media/xoom
sudo chown user:user /media/xoom

NOTE: "user" in the above code is literally your user name for your box.

ANOTHER NOTE: if you stopped here you could mount by typing mtpfs /media/xoom -o allow_other and unmount by typing fusermount -u /media/xoom...but that's no fun

add the mount point to your fstab:

Code:

sudo gedit /etc/fstab

In the first unused line available you might want to type a comment like:

Code:

# mount point for moto xoom

then add this line after it:

Code:

mtpfs     /media/xoom     fuse     user, noauto,allow_other      0      0

Next modify fuse.conf to allow_other:

Code:

sudo gedit /etc/fuse.conf

uncomment the last line which should read:

Code:

#user_allow_other

uncomment this line by removing the '#' symbol.

add your user to the fuse group:

Code:

sudo gedit /etc/group

a long file will open, press CTRL+F to bring up the find dialog and type

Code:

fuse

close the dialog and fuse should be selected and visible.
At the end of that line with no space add your user name.

Save that file. Close it.

Lastly reboot your computer.

Now when your computer restarts, if you look at your "Places" menu you will see a Drive marked with 'xoom'

Plug in your xoom, and click on xoom in Places.

Nautilus should open with all your files that you have on your device. It will also place a mounted drive icon on your desktop. If you would like to unmount, right click on that icon and click unmount.

As you can see this was a pain for me, but hopefully this solution will work for everybody. I know the instructions are really long but follow it and you will feel old school mounting your storage in your file browser.

NOTE: THIS WAS TESTED ON UBUNTU 10.10 ONLY, IF THIS WORKS FOR ANYONE ELSE PLEASE POST YOUR FINDINGS.

Also, I am fairly new to Linux actually, so if there is an easier way to mount the storage in nautilus let me know. This works for me so please no flames.

**Sponsors** · 03-05-2011 07:32 PM

**myalenti** · 04-07-2011 11:57 AM

Thanks for the info. It worked on 10.10 with kernel 2.6.35-25-generic. There was a minor issue however with your fstab entry. Apparently there is an extra space between the comma separated list of mount options. That was causing fuse to lock up that mount point.

I fixed the typo in fstab and unmounted and remounted and voila.

Thanks!

**timrock** · 04-11-2011 11:30 AM

i have tried than and was successful, but every once in a while i get a message saying "Transport endpoint is not connected". and my xoom is mounted, but i dont see all my folders. sometimes i see none, or i see one called Playlist.

**Zenman77** · 04-15-2011 07:42 AM

Originally Posted by timrock

i have tried than and was successful, but every once in a while i get a message saying "Transport endpoint is not connected". and my xoom is mounted, but i dont see all my folders. sometimes i see none, or i see one called Playlist.

Yep....... i'm getting the same thing. Any ideas?

**Zenman77** · 04-16-2011 08:50 PM

I followed the instructions to the T while using Ubuntu 10.10 (64 bit) and kept getting an error. What worked for me is when I loaded the 32 bit version instead with the same instructions............

**MacKai** · 04-18-2011 02:21 PM

Originally Posted by myalenti

Thanks for the info. It worked on 10.10 with kernel 2.6.35-25-generic. There was a minor issue however with your fstab entry. Apparently there is an extra space between the comma separated list of mount options. That was causing fuse to lock up that mount point.

I fixed the typo in fstab and unmounted and remounted and voila.

Thanks!

Can some one point out EXACTLY where this extra space is. Or has it already been fixed in the instructions?

I'm looking to simply cut and paste the instruction I'm not comfortable in the Terminal

thanks everyone

**gibbs1984** · 04-18-2011 03:08 PM

I'm getting an error message saying:

Could not display "/media/xoom"

The location is not a folder.

I'm using Linux Mint 11 Gnome (based off of Ubuntu 10.10), any ideas?

Sent from my Motorola Xoom using Tapatalk.

**gibbs1984** · 04-18-2011 03:12 PM

Originally Posted by gibbs1984

I'm getting an error message saying:

Could not display "/media/xoom"

The location is not a folder.

I'm using Linux Mint 11 Gnome (based off of Ubuntu 10.10), any ideas?

Sent from my Motorola Xoom using Tapatalk.

The xoom folder is in /media aswell as I just checked, checked pemissions and all is root and it's allowed executing programmes, it can see my xoom too because the folder says the same capacity as my xoom, with the same 1.6gb used, so why can't I access the folder?

Sent from my Motorola Xoom using Tapatalk.

**gibbs1984** · 04-18-2011 03:21 PM

Strange, I can't access the folder from Places but if I navigate to it and open as root then it works, simple enough for me.

Thanks for your help as I was pulling my hair out trying to figure it out and was just about to post a thread on this subject.

Sent from my Motorola Xoom using Tapatalk.

**grenness** · 04-18-2011 04:32 PM

OK, so I have everything working thanks to this thread, except the most important thing - copying files to the Xoom.
What happens is that when I copy a single or several files using Nautilus (default GUI file manager in Ubuntu 10.10) as soon as the files seems to have been copied 100% they just disappear on the Xoom. Just like that.
Trying to do a cp in terminal gets me this:

Code:

christopher@maranello:~/Desktop$ cp test.txt /media/xoom
christopher@maranello:~/Desktop$

no error messages at all, but browsing the root folder of the Xoom shows me that there's no test.txt file there...

Any help would be highly appreciated!

Regards,
Christopher

2.6.35-28-generic-pae #50-Ubuntu SMP Fri Mar 18 20:43:15 UTC 2011 i686 GNU/Linux

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Mount Internal Storage in Ubuntu

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