Kobo Arc Android tablet not seen

[tpprynn]

If I type lsusb in the terminal I get

Bus 001 Device 007: ID 2237:d108 Kobo Inc.

at the bottom of the list. If I change the Arc's mode from MTP to camera Mint will be able ot use its pictures folders, but as MTP I'm not offered to open the Arc in the File Manager, no device is seen.

I remember using .rules files to get my old Mobile Broadband dongles working and imagine something like that needs to be done. Windows seems to just see it as a drive.

Help much appreciated.

(I'm using Linux Mint 14 64 bit KDE.)

Edit: I want to leave this thread here in case someone solves the whole thing, but I am pleased to see that Amarok can work with the Kobo Arc without any of the faffing I describe below, seeing the Arc after a few seconds and letting me copy between the pc and it or vice versa. That takes care of the music side of the Arc. I haven't yet tried to see if Amarok can be made to move a video or full size film but I've noticed that Amarok, though the most professional Linux music player in many ways, sometimes seems to lose its mind with less taxing operations than moving 700mb.

[Orbmiser]

Just guessing here. But do you have mtp-tools installed? It's in the repo's

Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) library tools

libmtp is a library for communicating with MTP aware devices in POSIX
compliant operating systems. It implements MTP Basic, the subset
proposed for standardization.

The Media Transfer Protocol (commonly referred to as MTP) is a devised
set of custom extensions to support the transfer of music files on
USB digital audio players and movie files on USB portable media players.

This package contains tools for communicating with MTP devices.

As libmtp-runtime,libmtp9,libmtp-common should be installed already I believe.
Again just guessing and could be totally off-base.
.

[tpprynn]

Thanks, that wasn't installed but it hasn't helped. I find that my Sansa Clip mp3 player is seen though. I think it's one of those .rules things somehow, it's kind of like when a dongle is seen as a cd drive and not a usb modem. But I've got a brain fog and casn't think what to do next.

All ideas welcome. (Maybe someone has a Google Nexus working? Should be the same-ish.)

[tpprynn]

If I get nowhere I can at least use this advice to move new Cd rips with this method:

"I found that I could transfer files into folders DCIM and PICTURES in the PTP mode. So I zipped my files transferred them to DCIM folder. Later using filemanger (I used Androidzip since they were zip files) unzipped them and moved to newly created folders outside DCIM folders.
It was so simple as that."

I've found a promising link regarding the Nexus 7 but am away from the pc right now. There is a suggestion that the problem is a deliberate result of the makers of the tablets, which is outrageous, using the work of Linux programmers to make a commercial product that cuts itself off from the, kind of, parent system...

[Orbmiser]

The other way is use dropbox app on tablet and install dropbox on linux system to get files across devices. As soon as you upload them to dropbox then they are available to download to whatever folder on your linux system.

[tpprynn]

H'm, Amarok can see the Kobo Arc now, maybe that's progress, though when I asked it to copy one album to the Arc it dumped two of the twelve tracks there on their own with no folder and then stopped the transfer. There are too many assumptions on some how-to pages though, for instance when on an Arch wiki they use the phrase YOURMOUNTPOINT in the command

mtpfs -o allow_other /media/YOURMOUNTPOINT

I don't know if they mean to type that or something specific, having no idea what the specific thing would be. I've used instructions for the Nexus and Kindle Fire but neither worked as far as getting the Arc mounted as an mtp device or usb device.

I have the folowing in the newly created /etc/udev/rules.d/100-android.rules

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="2237", ATTR{idProduct}=="d108", MODE="0666"

as 2237 and d108 were the values revealed by lsusb.

Any ideas anyone? I wonder if an entry in fstab could do it? I'd have no idea what to put there though. The entry would need a UUID wouldn't it? But how we find that out I've no idea. If I type mtp-detect or mtp-connect in the terminal it seems to know there's an Android device there but there is no notification to open folders and no appearance in Dolphin of the Arc.

Sigh...

[tpprynn]

Nice, several hours later I'm nearly there I think.
The rule in the previous post should read:

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="2237", ATTR{idProduct}=="d108", MODE="0666", OWNER="xxx"

where your own Linux username, as per what you chose during your Mint installation, goes where the three x's are, in my case my first name in lower case.

Then I adapted to this(from http://www.nexus7tablethelp.com/2012/07 ... using.html) using the right Kobo values as previously established:

How to Connect Nexus 7 to Linux
Open the terminal window and type the commands to setup.
* First install the necessary tools:
sudo apt-get install mtp-tools mtpfs
* Set up a UDEV rule
gksu gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules
* Type this text in it. Make sure all are in a single line:
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="04e8", ATTR{idProduct}=="6860", MODE="0666", OWNER="your-username-in-the-linux"
* Set up a mount point
sudo service udev restart
sudo mkdir /media/Nexus7
sudo chmod a+rwx /media/Nexus7
* Plug your Nexus 7 in and select MTP on the tablet, then enter:
sudo mtpfs -o allow_other /media/Nexus7
* Now You can browse your Android phone contents or add/remove/modify files using Nautilus. When you need To unmount, try this:
sudo umount mtpfs

...At this point I now have the tablet's folders in /media/Arc (I chose Arc where it says Nexus7 above) and I also typed again 'mtp-connect' into the terminal. I haven't replicated this after a reboot - the files in /media/Arc don't appear now - and Dolphin froze when trying to navigate them anyway.

Hopefully someone can see where I'm going wrong and tidy up my flailing attempts in a reply later. Many thanks if you can. Maybe a script to automate what I typed into the terminal, but I don't have the knowledge on scripting to know how to get one to run if the Arc is plugged in. Maybe I could point some people in the bash subforum here.