Can't mount my Galaxy S3 in Mint

[Tharkis]

So as far as I understand it this has to do with the fact that android now uses MTD. At first it was loading Banshee and Banshee was locking up. So i disabled the autorun and now I see my two SD devices in Nautilus but I can't see anything past the root directories. Does anyone have any ideas how to fix this? I'm runing Mint 13.

[remoulder]

This has been discussed at length in http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=116879. Please search before posting.

[Tharkis]

Thanks remoulder, I did search and I did see that post. Unfortunately, there is no solution there or rather the "solution" provided didn't work. You might want to just chill out on the "plz search first" ****. Some of us have used a forum before.

[Neffisaurus]

This is mostly a 'me too' post. Tharkis, I don't have a definite solution to your problem but don't lose hope - I can (inconsistently) mount my S3 on Mint 13. If I could figure out how to consistently mount it, or where the bugginess lies, I'd be much happier! I've googled around the subject but never got to the bottom of it... but I'll share my experience and it might give you a few things to try.

Firstly, I'm using a rooted i9300 S3 (i.e. the international version), running Cyanogenmod 9 rather than stock Samsung firmware. CM9 is based on Ice Cream Sandwich. This may or may not be relevant.

I'm assuming you have already installed mtp-tools and mtpfs - supposed to give us mtp support in linux. If you don't have these, firing up the Software Manager and installing them would be a great start. That said, in my experience most mtp devices are a littly flaky in linux, not just the S3.

I also had your experience with Banshee locking up (with the S3 in MTP mode), and the same with Shotwell (with the S3 in camera mode). Like you, I eventually disabled autorun. I'd still get a dialog box with the error "Unable to mount GT-I9300 / Error initializing camera: -60: Could not lock the device". After dismissing the dialogs, I usually find two GT-i9300 devices mounted (the phones internal storage, and it's external SD card) but similar to you, can't see past the root directories.... or actually copy files, or do anything useful.

If I switch the S3 connectivity to camera mode, and then back to mtp mode (via the Android notification drawer which pops up a "Connected as a media/camera device - touch for other USB options" message when you usb connect the phone) - it will usually mount properly in Nautilus after a variable (maybe 30-60 seconds) length of time. I can see and interact with the whole filesystem of the external SD card, and the parts of the internal storage which mtp lets you access (i.e. not the parts that you need root access on the phone to see, but this is expected).

This doesn't work 100% of the time - I can't figure out why. Sometimes I connect/disconnect and switch mtp/camera several times before it mounts properly. Some people claim turning on Android debugging (system settings > developer options > Android debugging) helps, but it doesn't make any difference to me. Interestingly, attempting to connect the phone as a camera (ptp mode) never works. Also, I can USB-tether the phone and use it for interweb access, but can't mount the filesystem at the same time.

Lastly, if none of the above helps, you could try the gmtp tool from the repositories - this has worked with every MTP device I've tried. It's a clunky interface and pretty slow to up/download, but it does at least give you basic access to the files on your phone.

[redmonkey]

I had a similar issue with a new/fresh install of LMDE (64bit if it makes any difference?) running MATE. The Phone was configured to use MTP for USB connections and when plugging the phone to PC I got an error dialogue telling me gPhoto could not initialise the camera, and two devices (one for the internal phone storage and the other for the external SD Card) appeared in the left hand pane of Caja. While I could browse the directory structure of both devices I could not see any files, the file explorer pane had a note to say that I was browsing a media device and a button to open Banshee and manage the files that way. Clicking the button opens Banshee which immediately hangs and becomes non-responsive and requires a force quit. Disabling all the autorun options I could find made no difference.

I have made some progress and got to a point where I can consistently mount the phone and view/transfer files, although I still have some issues with the main one being that the mount point doesn't show up on the left hand pane of Caja although every now and again and seemingly randomly it will appear but it typically take upwards of 20 minutes before it shows.

I used a couple of udev rules to recognise the device when plugged in and out and use go-mtpfs to mount/unmount accordingly. I tried mtpfs, jmtpfs and go-mtpfs the latter seemed more stable and had better performance for my set up. I could probably give more detail on the steps required if anyone is interested.

[BillV]

Does anyone know if the S3 mount and read/write ext3 formatted sd card?
Linux Mint 13 Maya Xfce mounts the S3 but can't see the sd card. I formatted a 64gb SanDisk sd card using the S3, plugged the sd into my card reader and see via g-parted the S3 formats it to "exfat". Mint sees the phone as two devices, both same name (one wasn't the exfat formatted sd card) they both property as 10GB, one opens and shows the phone folders, the other is emtpy with a "LOST.DIR" folder in it but also get in 'both' devices the banshee app expecting digital media in the upper right corner of LM file manager (nautilus, i changed it as xfce was thunar).
I want to load some music to it so am thinking format the sd to ext3, copy the files over to it, plug sd in phone and hopefully all will work well, including next time connect phone via usb to LM pc and be able to xfr files to/from the sd card. Thanks folks.

[bigj231]

The problem is the stock TouchWiz roms don't support USB mass storage. Linux MTP support is not good, so I haven't had any luck there either. How I got around it on my S2 was to install the leaked FK23 build (Jellybean Google Now is nice BTW) which included USB mass storage. It voided my warranty (according to Samsung) but I don't really care. Look on XDA-developers if you are interested in rooting and Android development.
If you don't mind flashing a custom ROM, you could look and see which ones support USB mass storage.
I did get Mint to mount via MTP, but it only worked once for about 5 minutes. It hasn't worked since.

[BillV]

ok Samsung Galaxy S3 won't mount ext3 formatted sd card (Sandisk 64GB micro sd). I formatted it using G-parted in Linux Mint 13 Maya Xfce, The S3 initially sees the card, then shows with an exclamation point over the sd icon, the only option in the system settings is to mount sd which it fails to mount. Going to try FAT32, as that is what it was originally and the S3 did mount it, (i formatted it using the S3 originally and the S3 set it to exfat as mentioned in the earlier post)

[Macmeister]

On every forum theres always some prick with the 'google it n00b' attitude.

Exactly. There's nothing like getting your hand slapped when asking for help.

[Hammer459]

Supposedly Android device compatibility will be better in Mint 15 as Ubuntu is just releasing better Android support
That should take care of most "I can not mount my <insert phone type here>" posts