MTP support prevents mass-storage capable media players from mounting

[Arve Bersvendsen]

Since recently, Ubuntu 9.04 has added MTP support for media players that support it. The problem with this is that it prevents devices from mounting as mass-storage devices (I've recently tried this on both a Sony NWZ-S618F and a Sansa m230).

The output of dmesg is:

[ 6395.124091] usb 2-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 9
[ 6395.259094] usb 2-3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 6395.261305] scsi11 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
[ 6395.262326] usb-storage: device found at 9
[ 6395.262330] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning

The devices never settle, since, I assume, libmtp sets the devices to MTP mode, in which they are unmountable, and if you want to copy to and from the devices, you have to use an MTP-capable device to do so. Keep in mind that the workaround for, for instance the Sansa, is to disable MTP support on the device, other devices, like the Sony has no such option, and are either connected in mass-storage mode, or MTP mode, not both.

What I expect to happen:
- For Ubuntu to just mount the device, or, at the very least ask the user whether he/she/it wants to use it as a music device or a USB mass-storage device (or even an automated per-device preference)

What happens:
- Device is unusable. I can no longer copy files/folders to the device. This involves losing the ability to copy other media files to the device (In particular video)

The workaround in this case seems to be remove mtp support by removing libmtp8 - but this has unintended side-effects: It becomes impossible to use mtp-only devices, and rhythmbox depends on it, and so gets uninstalled if you attempt.

(There is another workaround: To plug in the device when booting, but this is also, understandably not an attractive option)

[Arve Bersvendsen (arve-bersvendsen)]

Note that this is quite probably _not_ libmtp after all. Now my player is back to insisting on an MTP connection, even if I uninstaller libmtp8.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.