Re: Accessing Files on Android Device With Linux

On Sun, 22 Sep 2024 18:59:59 -0500, tb wrote:

I have an ASUS Zenfone Max Plus 1 with Android 8.1.0.
I also have MX Linux 21.3 on a PC.
With the PC I am trying to access the folder in the phone where pictures are stored.  So I plugged the phone using a USB cable into a port of my PC but nothing happened.
I used my PC's File Manager to see if the phone would show up as a plugged in device but it did not.
Is it even possible to access files on an Android device using Linux?  I would think so since Android is a derivative of Linux, but one never knows...

A lot depends on the version of Android and how it's set up, but most will
work with Linux if you're willing to use the command line to mount it.
The first step is to find out which transfer protocol the phone is set to.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Media_Transfer_Protocol
http://www.webupd8.org/2012/12/how-to-mount-android-40-ubuntu-go-mtpfs.html
Mounting an Android 4.0+ device in Ubuntu is pretty tricky, but there is a
FUSE filesystem called Go-mtpfs, created by a Google employee because
"mtpfs was very unstable" for him, which works great. Read on to find out
how to use it and easily install it in Ubuntu using a PPA!
https://github.com/hanwen/go-mtpfs
Go-mtpfs is a simple FUSE filesystem for mounting Android devices as a MTP
device. It will expose all storage areas of a device in the mount, and only
reads file metadata as needed, making it mount quickly. It uses Android
extensions to read/write partial data, so manipulating large files requires
no extra space in /tmp. It has been tested on various flagship devices
(Galaxy Nexus, Xoom, Nexus 7). As of Jan. 2013, it uses a pure Go
implementation of MTP, which is based on libusb.