Getting music onto an Android phone
I had bought a MicroSD card to go along with my Motorola Razr M, since it has a limited internal storage of 8G.
(That is to say, limited by today's standards, where a singe Chrome tab can take up a few hundred MB. I remember when I was excited to find a computer with 8MB Ram since that meant I could play Quake on it. Anyway ...)
I assembled everything on my (linux) laptop in one folder, this should just be a copy-and-paste, drag-and-drop kind of thing, right ?
Wrong.
Instead I had to wade through a bunch of online forum posts, about mounting the phone on windows, on mac, configuring various settings.
When I plugged in the phone through USB, I got a notification saying the phone was connected but it didn't show up in Ubuntu's list of connected devices (and I know this works for other devices because my external hard drive shows up when I connect i
t).
Finally I found this, it assured me that "Fortunately, it’s quite easy to get this working".
Of course, it was incomplete (yes, you need sudo apt-get install mtpfs but also sudo apt-get install mtp-tools)
sudo mkdir /media/MTPDevice
sudo chmod 775 /media/MTPDevice
sudo mtpfs -o allow_other /media/MTPDevice/
Finally, I saw
$ mtp-detect
libmtp version: 1.1.3
Listing raw device(s)
Device 0 (VID=22b8 and PID=2e51) is UNKNOWN.
Please report this VID/PID and the device model to the libmtp development team
Found 1 device(s):
22b8:2e51 @ bus 2, dev 9
Attempting to connect device(s)
PTP_ERROR_IO: failed to open session, trying again after resetting USB interface
LIBMTP libusb: Attempt to reset device
inep: usb_get_endpoint_status(): No such device
outep: usb_get_endpoint_status(): No such device
usb_clear_halt() on IN endpoint: No such device
usb_clear_halt() on OUT endpoint: No such device
usb_clear_halt() on INTERRUPT endpoint: No such device
usb_open(): No such device
LIBMTP PANIC: Could not init USB on second attempt
Unable to open raw device 0
OK.
Woo hoo. So much for that.
Then I came across this, which seemed more pragmatic, since it said "If you're using ubuntu (12.04 or 12.10) and you want to browse your Android 4.0+ device you know how frustrating can be." Yes I do.
But it didn't have anything fundamentally different.
So I just pulled out the USB cable and plugged it in again ("when all else fails, cycle power")
This time, it worked.
$ mtp-detect
libmtp version: 1.1.3
Listing raw device(s)
Device 0 (VID=22b8 and PID=2e51) is UNKNOWN.
Please report this VID/PID and the device model to the libmtp development team
Found 1 device(s):
22b8:2e51 @ bus 2, dev 11
Attempting to connect device(s)
Android device detected, assigning default bug flags
USB low-level info:
Interface has a kernel driver attached.
bcdUSB: 512
bDeviceClass: 0
bDeviceSubClass: 0
bDeviceProtocol: 0
idVendor: 22b8
idProduct: 2e51
IN endpoint maxpacket: 512 bytes
OUT endpoint maxpacket: 512 bytes
< ... and many more pages ... >
While we're here, a clarification by way of digression: I am not ranting against MTP, just its usability. It is clearly (IMHO) better than the previous mass storage option, since it supports well-defined interfaces to specific file types, such as this one for JPEG files:
3801: JPEG
dc01: Storage ID UINT32 data type ANY 32BIT VALUE form READ ONLY
dc02: Object Format UINT16 data type ANY 16BIT VALUE form READ ONLY
dc03: Protection Status UINT16 data type ANY 16BIT VALUE form READ ONLY
dc04: Object Size UINT64 data type READ ONLY
dc07: Object File Name STRING data type GET/SET
dc09: Date Modified STRING data type DATETIME FORM READ ONLY
dc0b: Parent Object UINT32 data type ANY 32BIT VALUE form READ ONLY
dc41: Persistant Unique Object Identifier UINT128 data type READ ONLY
dc44: Name STRING data type READ ONLY
dce0: Display Name STRING data type READ ONLY
dc4e: Date Added STRING data type DATETIME FORM READ ONLY
dc48: Description STRING data type READ ONLY
But wait a minute, what happened to the directory I created ?
$ ls -ld /media/MTPDevice/
ls: cannot access /media/MTPDevice/: Transport endpoint is not connected
Obviously I celebrated too soon. More trudging through posts. As an idea of how crazy this can seem, I found this post on askubuntu which said:
"Please note the Terence Egan Blog where you took the instructions from is a copy of an OMG Ubuntu article. He has missed an important step to restart your PC before running the Echo commands I suggest you try and reinstall from the original OMG Ubuntu source. Click on this link" (emphasis mine, link omitted).
Yes, that's right, N00b. You forgot to restart.
(In case you're wondering how that story ends,
"Oh my god!!! I did not know that. Will do this asap. – ubuntico Jul 3 '12 at 16:40
It worked this way. I connect the mobile and them immediately (under 1s after connection) I have to start command android-connect. Otherwise, the system will try to mount the mobile and after that I cannot use fuse to mount it. It the same with you? – ubuntico Jul 3 '12 at 17:08")
Maybe I'm expecting too much, but I would not refer to this tenuous solution as "it worked".
Hmm, it looks like I skipped a step. I had to modify /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules to add the right SUBSYSTEM... rule, and then sudo service udev restart.
Nope, no luck. I can't access, mount, unmount or delete.
$ fusermount -u /media/MTPDevice
fusermount: entry for /media/MTPDevice not found in /etc/mtab
$ sudo mtpfs -o allow_other /media/MTPDevice/
fuse: bad mount point `/media/MTPDevice/': Transport endpoint is not connected
$ sudo rmdir /media/MTPDevice
rmdir: failed to remove `/media/MTPDevice': Device or resource busy
But wait! All is not lost! We can use the adb tool to interact directly with the android filesystem!
$ ./adb push /media/My\ Book/Music/Amazon\ MP3/Eminem/ /sdcard/Music/
push: /media/My Book/Music/Amazon MP3/Eminem/Recovery [Explicit]/17 - Untitled [Explicit].mp3 -> /sdcard/Music/Recovery [Explicit]/17 - Untitled [Explicit].mp3
push: /media/My Book/Music/Amazon MP3/Eminem/Recovery [Explicit]/16 - You're Never Over [Explicit].mp3 -> /sdcard/Music/Recovery [Explicit]/16 - You're Never Over [Explicit].mp3
push: /media/My Book/Music/Amazon MP3/Eminem/Recovery [Explicit]/15 - Love The Way You Lie [Explicit].mp3 -> /sdcard/Music/Recovery [Explicit]/15 - Love The Way You Lie [Explicit].mp3
push: /media/My Book/Music/Amazon MP3/Eminem/Recovery [Explicit]/14 - Almost Famous [Explicit].mp3 -> /sdcard/Music/Recovery [Explicit]/14 - Almost Famous [Explicit].mp3
push: /media/My Book/Music/Amazon MP3/Eminem/Recovery [Explicit]/13 - So Bad [Explicit].mp3 -> /sdcard/Music/Recovery [Explicit]/13 - So Bad [Explicit].mp3
push: /media/My Book/Music/Amazon MP3/Eminem/Recovery [Explicit]/12 - 25 To Life [Explicit].mp3 -> /sdcard/Music/Recovery [Explicit]/12 - 25 To Life [Explicit].mp3
push: /media/My Book/Music/Amazon MP3/Eminem/Recovery [Explicit]/11 - Cinderella Man [Explicit].mp3 -> /sdcard/Music/Recovery [Explicit]/11 - Cinderella Man [Explicit].mp3
push: /media/My Book/Music/Amazon MP3/Eminem/Recovery [Explicit]/10 - Space Bound [Explicit].mp3 -> /sdcard/Music/Recovery [Explicit]/10 - Space Bound [Explicit].mp3
push: /media/My Book/Music/Amazon MP3/Eminem/Recovery [Explicit]/09 - No Love [Explicit].mp3 -> /sdcard/Music/Recovery [Explicit]/09 - No Love [Explicit].mp3
push: /media/My Book/Music/Amazon MP3/Eminem/Recovery [Explicit]/08 - Seduction [Explicit].mp3 -> /sdcard/Music/Recovery [Explicit]/08 - Seduction [Explicit].mp3
push: /media/My Book/Music/Amazon MP3/Eminem/Recovery [Explicit]/07 - Not Afraid [Explicit].mp3 -> /sdcard/Music/Recovery [Explicit]/07 - Not Afraid [Explicit].mp3
push: /media/My Book/Music/Amazon MP3/Eminem/Recovery [Explicit]/06 - Going Through Changes [Explicit].mp3 -> /sdcard/Music/Recovery [Explicit]/06 - Going Through Changes [Explicit].mp3
push: /media/My Book/Music/Amazon MP3/Eminem/Recovery [Explicit]/05 - W.T.P. [Explicit].mp3 -> /sdcard/Music/Recovery [Explicit]/05 - W.T.P. [Explicit].mp3
push: /media/My Book/Music/Amazon MP3/Eminem/Recovery [Explicit]/04 - Won't Back Down [Explicit].mp3 -> /sdcard/Music/Recovery [Explicit]/04 - Won't Back Down [Explicit].mp3
push: /media/My Book/Music/Amazon MP3/Eminem/Recovery [Explicit]/03 - On Fire [Explicit].mp3 -> /sdcard/Music/Recovery [Explicit]/03 - On Fire [Explicit].mp3
push: /media/My Book/Music/Amazon MP3/Eminem/Recovery [Explicit]/02 - Talkin' 2 Myself [Explicit].mp3 -> /sdcard/Music/Recovery [Explicit]/02 - Talkin' 2 Myself [Explicit].mp3
push: /media/My Book/Music/Amazon MP3/Eminem/Recovery [Explicit]/01 - Cold Wind Blows [Explicit].mp3 -> /sdcard/Music/Recovery [Explicit]/01 - Cold Wind Blows [Explicit].mp3
17 files pushed. 0 files skipped.
3624 KB/s (150604367 bytes in 40.580s)
and verify it after running adb shell
shell@scorpion_mini:/ $ ls sdcard/Music/
Recovery [Explicit]
So yeah. It works. And it's a magical experience.
Update:
To add to my misery, I still can't play the songs. Google Play doesn't pick them up (no surprise there) but neither does a dedicated music playing app like Winamp.
(Yes, Winamp! It's still around! It still plays the "whips the llama's ass" clip when it starts! But it doesn't find my music ?!)
As far as I can tell, this is because on my phone, the sdcard is mounted on /storage/sdcard1 instead of /storage/sdcard0, and that has made all the difference.