gvfsd-afc crashes when attempting to copy a file from an iPhone using Nautilus

[Jeffery To]

I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 13.10 (Saucy) and am now unable to copy files from my iPhone (with iOS 6) using Nautilus.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Open a Nautilus window.
2. Attach an iPhone. Two new entries appear under Devices in the left side panel: "<iPhone name>" and "Documents on <iPhone name>"
3. Middle-click on the <iPhone name> entry (or right-click and select "Open in New Tab") to mount the iPhone file system and open a new tab.
4. Copy a file from the iPhone tab, and paste into the original tab.

At this point Nautilus shows an alert box:
Error while copying "<filename>".
There was an error copying the into <directory>.
Show more details (when expanded:)
Operation not supported by backend

I don't remember if Apport prompts me to report this crash immediately or after a certain amount of time, but I have a crash report in /var/crash for gvfsd-afc. I'd be happy to attach it here if necessary, though I've already reported this crash a few times; I'm sure the developers can also find it on errors.ubuntu.com under the title "gvfsd-afc crashed with SIGABRT in g_assertion_message()".

In Nautilus, I can still copy files to the iPhone and delete files from the iPhone; only copying files from the iPhone is not working. I can also view pictures from my iPhone directly, and copy files from it using Terminal (by going to the mount point in /run/user directly), so it appears only Nautilus is affected.

Thanks!

[Jeffery To (jefferyto)]

There seems to be a number of bugs (bug #1208310, bug #1223509, bug #1236119, bug #1236495) that have the same title (" gvfsd-afc crashed with SIGABRT in g_assertion_message()"), but they're all marked as duplicates of bug #1206627, which at the moment is private, so I can't verify whether I'm experiencing the same issue.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Jeffery To (jefferyto)]

I retried this today (for no particular reason) and found that I can now copy files from my iPhone with Nautilus. I'm not sure why it works, nor did I notice anything relevant in the packages that I upgraded recently.

:-) that it works now but :-( for not knowing why or what happened.