mounting a motorola moto-g phone

[John Forkosh]

Tried the ubuntu directions at
codeyarns.com/tech/2013-12-23-how-to-mount-moto-g-on-ubuntu-using-mtp.html
which seemed to work as advertised...

# mtp-detect showed, in part,
-----------------------------------------------------------
libmtp version: 1.1.18

Listing raw device(s)
Device 0 (VID=22b8 and PID=2e82) is a Motorola Moto G (ID2).
Found 1 device(s):
Motorola: Moto G (ID2) (22b8:2e82) @ bus 2, dev 6
Attempting to connect device(s)
Android device detected, assigning default bug flags
USB low-level info:
bcdUSB: 512
bDeviceClass: 0
bDeviceSubClass: 0
bDeviceProtocol: 0
idVendor: 22b8
idProduct: 2e82
(then lots more stuff)
-----------------------------------------------------------

jmtpfs -o allow_other /media/motog/ output on stdout
-----------------------------------------------------------
Device 0 (VID=22b8 and PID=2e82) is a Motorola Moto G (ID2).
Android device detected, assigning default bug flags
-----------------------------------------------------------
(note: the webpage says mtpfs, but slackware has /bin/jmtpfs
which seems to be the same thing as far as I can tell)

But after mounting ls -al under /media shows that motog directory as
d????????? ? ? ? ? ? motog
And it's totally inaccessible.

$ fusermount -u /media/motog/ works, and then ls -al shows
drwxrwxrwx 2 root root 4096 Oct 3 05:00 motog
as expected.

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong and how to do it right?
--
John Forkosh ( mailto: j...@f.com where j=john and f=forkosh )

[Henrik Carlqvist]

On Sun, 03 Oct 2021 09:36:26 +0000, John Forkosh wrote:
> Any ideas what I'm doing wrong and how to do it right?

Do you need to mount it? Usually I access mpt devices using gphoto2
instead. I don't have any Moto G myself, but it seems to be supported by
gphoto2:

gphoto2 --list-cameras | grep -i "moto g"
"Motorola Moto G (ID1)"
"Motorola Moto G (ID2)"
"Motorola Moto G (XT1032)"

regards Henrik

[John Forkosh]

Thanks, Henrik, I'll check it out. No, don't need to mount it,
per se, just need read and write access to it (to as many of
its directories and the files under them as possible).

[John Forkosh]

Thanks again, Henrik. I finally got an opportunity to check it out,
at least partly. Doesn't seem to entirely work...
bash-5.1$ gphoto2 --auto-detect
Model Port
----------------------------------------------------------
Motorola Moto G (ID2) usb:002,007
...seems to work okay.

Then...
bash-5.1$ gphoto2 --summary
Camera summary:
Manufacturer: motorola
Model: MotoG3
Version: 1.0
Serial Number: ZY222ZLHG2
Vendor Extension ID: 0x6 (1.0)
Vendor Extension Description: microsoft.com: 1.0; android.com: 1.0;
mot-mobility.com/DSU: 1.2
etc, etc, etc
...plus a whole lot of additional gobbledy-gook, but nothing that
immediately looked like an error message, as far as I could tell
(which isn't really very far).

But then...
bash-5.1$ gphoto2 --list-files
There is no file in folder '/'.

*** Error ***
PTP Invalid Storage ID
*** Error (-1: 'Unspecified error') ***

For debugging messages, please use the --debug option.
etc, etc
...So I tried adding --debug, which produced over 500 lines
on stderr, but couldn't really make heads or tails (nor any
other anatomical part) out of any of it, but will be glad to
post it all if anybody really wants.

I also tried running digikam, which seems to be a kde frontend
for gphoto2, and that didn't seem to work either... it seemed
to identify the camera, but couldn't (or at least didn't)
download anything from it. Of course, I'm not actually sure
that I clicked all the right buttons to request that it
download all the images. But there was a little "progress"
bar that got up to 49% and then just hung. But zero downloads
at that point.

[Henrik Carlqvist]

On Sun, 10 Oct 2021 11:29:08 +0000, John Forkosh wrote:

> Doesn't seem to entirely work...

Unfortunately I can't be to much more help, I have no experience from
that phone myself. My own Android phone is mounted as a vfat file system
after I on the phone select that it should make its file system available
to the host computer. I have only used gphoto2 together with my Canon
digital camera.

Stumbling in the dark, I can only hope that you find som explanation to
your problems in the output of "dmesg".

regards Henrik

[NotReal]

This is a long shot since you are likely already aware of this, but
once the USB connection is made on the Moto, under Settings/Connected
Devices/USB you have to select Transfer Files or Transfer Photos.

[John Forkosh]

Thanks again, NotReal and also Henrik. Finally got "it" working,
but it's a different "it" (not the Moto G) than originally -- turns
out my carrier is discontinuing 3G service at the end-of-year, so new
phones are mandatory for its old 3G customers. Got a Galaxy A32 5G
replacement, which now works (download, anyway, but not capture)
with gphoto2.

Nevertheless, your hint was really right, NotReal, i.e., I wasn't
aware and hadn't been using gphoto2 correctly. Once the A32 arrived
and still didn't work with gphoto2 the way I was trying to use it,
I looked at the man page more carefully and figured out how to use
it right. So problem solved, if circuitously, and thanks again.