MTP

External resources

	Wikipedia

MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) is a protocol to allow the transfer of files to external devices.

MTPfs

Installation

Install sys-fs/mtpfs:

→ Information about USE flags

USE flag	Default	Recommended	Description
debug	No		Enable extra debug codepaths, like asserts and extra output. If you want to get meaningful backtraces see http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/qa/backtraces.xml
mad	No		Enable handling of MP3's metadata

root # emerge --ask mtpfs

Configuration

Your user needs to be in the "plugdev" group:

root # gpasswd -a YOUR_USER plugdev

Modify your /etc/fuse.conf:

File/etc/fuse.conf

user_allow_other

Usage

• Mount:

user $ mkdir ~/AndroidDevice
user $ mtpfs -o allow_other ~/AndroidDevice

Note

This can take really long time, up to several minutes. As an indication of successful mount the mtpfs will go to background.

• Unmount:

user $ fusermount -u ~/AndroidDevice

Go-mtpfs

Note

Newer Galaxy Devices (S3, Note2 and similar) use an own MTP-stack and don't work reliable, although this should be fixed in newer versions. See Bug#29

Installation

Install dev-lang/go:

→ Information about USE flags

USE flag	Default	Recommended	Description
bash-completion	No		Enable bash-completion support
emacs	No		Adds support for GNU Emacs
vim-syntax	No		Pulls in related vim syntax scripts
zsh-completion	No		Enable zsh completion support

root # emerge --ask go

Then install Go-mtpfs:

user $ mkdir ~/go
user $ export GOPATH=/home/$USER/go
user $ go get github.com/hanwen/go-mtpfs

Configuration

Your user needs to be in the "plugdev" group:

root # gpasswd -a YOUR_USER plugdev

Usage

• mount:

user $ mkdir ~/AndroidDevice
user $ ~/go/bin/go-mtpfs ~/AndroidDevice

• unmount:

user $ fusermount -u ~/AndroidDevice

KDE

kio-mtp is a slave for KDE's KIO framework.

As kio-mtp is still unstable, it is only part of kde overlay, which you need to setup first. Then:

root # echo kde-misc/kio-mtp >> /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords

root # emerge --ask kio-mtp

Finally quit KDE, and relaunch it. Now your MTP devices appear e.g. in Dolphin.

Troubleshooting

• If your device is not recognized by libmtp, try upgrading to latest (or even live) version.
• Sometimes (e.g. on HTC One X) USB debugging automatically turns on when device is connected to PC. You need to turn debugging off, otherwise libmtp can't recognize device.
• Make sure your Android device is not going to sleep and the screen is not getting locked. Set screen timeout to very long values, or enable in Development section flag "Do not turn off the screen".