I’ve just taken delivery of a new Fairphone 4 5G and I’m trying to download some music to complete it as a Christmas present for my wife. I’m using Ubuntu Linux. This fails to mount the Fairphone. Any suggestions? Thanks
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I’ve just had a suggestion that the Fairphone needs to be set to accept MTP connections. Any idea how to do this? Can’t see anything obvious in “settings”
Plug the phone into USB, open settings and type USB in the setting search bar. Now select USB controlled by: you can now select file transfer or or depending on the music format MIDI.
Thank you.
I really appreciate this suggestion. I’ll try it out…
regards - Jeffrey
It didn’t get me much further. When I change the file types (I tried File Transfer and MIDI) the Linux machine has another try to recognise it, but then still fails to mount it.
j
did you try with several usb cables ?
What is the eOS version on the phone?
I use a FP4 and linux mint.
When you plug it in, you have to swipe down from the top of the phone to selct the new usb pop up. Then it will ask if you want to transfer photos videos etc. Thats where you should find the mtp option. Click ok to allow the device and then it will open a folder for you to drag and drop items. It won’t mount until you said ok and allowed it
You have to do this every time you plug it in but it has always worked well on my end!
Also I am at work so these instructiosn might not be exact since I cant check my computer. But hope that helps!
Thanks everyone, I’m progressing but it’s a bit glacial. I’ve managed to drag a number of files across to the phone with the advice given. They ended up in “shared external Storage” and are listed in recently added music, but did not appear in music. They’re there now but I’m unclear what I did to get them there…
Rhythmbox seems to limit the number of files that can transfer on each occasion. It shuts down unexpectedly. I’ll get back to it tomorrow I expect.
Would be good to know which Linux you use and especially which desktop environment, since the DE is responsible for a lot of auto-detection on plugging in.
A good package to start on Linux is called android-file-transfer. This is a simple bidirectional GUI application which needs a cable. An advantage is that you have full access on both device memory and SD card from Linux.
I for myself always found one of the most simple connections between Linux and a mobile is good old FTP where the device is the server and the Linux PC is the client. You even don’t need a cable, just wifi. There are a lot of GUI client software packages for Linux, remember filezilla, gftp, Double Commander or even good old Midnight Commander and also a lot of FTP command line tools. There are several Android FTP server apps, one of the most common is primitive FTPd. When you established a connection using plain FTP or FTP over SSH you can pump as much as you want in both directions, not very fast but very robust.
A 3rd method would be to use HTTP transmission where the device opens a HTTP server. You need then a browser on Linux to make file manipulations.
Real mounting like any other USB device so that you get a mounted directory somewhere you can access with cd, cp, mv and rm is rather difficult on Linux. Never seen that.
What error message is shown by the linux file manager ?
I tried with the two I have. With one the computer does not mount the phone. With the other it does.
I use Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS. The desktop is Gnome. I will try to get android-file-transfer and try it out.
Thank you.
As the phone is just fresh out of the box I assume that it is running the latest stable version. It is 2.3-t-20240816426372-stable-FP4 on Android version 13
Thank you.
Hi, Mine does not do that. With a downswipe I get options but none related to USB. Thanks.
I just installed Android File Transfer on the linux machine but it fails to connect to the Fairphone. I’ve just downloaded Filezilla but now need to read how to use it (novice!) …although I suspect that if the machine can’t address my phone, neither can an app.
Thanks
Unable to open MTP device “001,005” Also one with “001, 013”
Thanks
So if you are a novice the android-file-transfer package is the right choice for you. The other ways without a cable are not more difficult but you should know some things before you can surely use them.
So when you plug in the cable on both sides (PC and device) you should see a message box on your device containing five options:
It’s an important precondition for any successful file transmission that you choose File transfer whenever you get that message box. The default is probably PTP (this means “peer to peer”), this will not work. Many people set this option once for all in the developer settings. But you are a novice, so I avoid to explain this here. So don’t oversee this message box on your mobile.
Then you open android-file-transfer on your Linux-PC. And there you should immediately see the directories of your “internal shared storage”. There are no more preconditions needed on the Linux side, it should just work. Above the list is a bar where you can also switch to “sdcard”. You have then two basic actions:
The upload actions are on buttons on the top, the download action is in the context menu on each item.
When this doesn’t work I would check the cable using a Windows PC of someone else. You should get a plugged device there in the Explorer with the name FP4 (it’s not an ordinary USB drive). You must be sure that you don’t use only a charging cable, you need a full USB data cable.
Thank you for taking the time to set this out.
Upon connecting the device there was no message box which appeared, but I found “file transfer options” when I searched in settings for “transfer”. This gave me the screen you described. I selected “File transfer” and the PC immediately recognised the Fairphone. I opened Android File Transfer which saw my device as a USB connected device (usb device 18d1:4ee1) but when I clicked ok it gave a message “No MTP device found”
In the field “USB controlled by” on that same Fairphone file transfer options screen there are two choices - USB controlled by either 1) Connected device, or 2) This device. It is set at “This device” (the phone). I tried the “connected device” option, as it seemed to me that if Android File Manager was running on the PC, that was the place the USB was controlled from. However, once chosen the “switching” message is soon replaced by “Couldn’t switch” It was therefore when using the other option that the message “No MTP device found” was given by Android File Manager.
I had managed to download a number of music files earlier, (so I know my cable is good) but not all the files I needed as Rhythmbox simply kept quiting in the middle of some transfers, hence my original post.
So Rhythmbox is not competent … understandable …
I think it was asked already, what is your File manager? I had (similar) issues with Thunar.
There are a number of things required in Pure Debian to allow Thunar to work nicely … I can look them up …
… or is the problem completely solved with AndroidFileTransfer?
The separate issue is to ensure that the phone allows file transfer … if pure file transfer (of music) is what is required.