Ubuntu – Android devices stopped showing up in Nautilus (Ubuntu 18.04)

18.04mtpnautilus

When I connect my Android cellphone to my home PC it does not show up in Nautilus – a nice cellphone icon labeled Android should show up on the sidebar but only additional CD-ROM shows up. No success with a different cellphone and a camera. On My home PC the gmpt can access both the cellphone internal and additional memories but Nautilus cannot do that anymore.

When I connect the phone to my office lapton then it shows up in Nautilus – both Android and CD-ROM shows up. It works perfectly.

Both computers: the same Ubuntu version, the same software installed, the same configurations. Maybe I've messed up something on my home PC while learning Ubuntu?

On my home PC the mtp-detect returns:

libmtp version: 1.1.13
Listing raw device(s)
Device 0 (VID=0b05 and PID=5f02) is a Asus Zenfone 2 ZE550ML (MTP).
   Found 1 device(s):
   Asus: Zenfone 2 ZE550ML (MTP) (0b05:5f02) @ bus 1, dev 18
Attempting to connect device(s)
Android device detected, assigning default bug flags

and a lot of USB low-level info.

lsusb returns:

Bus 001 Device 018: ID 0b05:5f02 ASUSTek Computer, Inc. 

ls -l /dev/bus/usb/001/018 returns:

crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 189, 17 maj 28 20:46 /dev/bus/usb/001/018

On my office laptop the mtp-detect returns:

libmtp version: 1.1.13
Listing raw device(s)
Device 0 (VID=0b05 and PID=5f02) is a Asus Zenfone 2 ZE550ML (MTP).
   Found 1 device(s):
   Asus: Zenfone 2 ZE550ML (MTP) (0b05:5f02) @ bus 1, dev 24
Attempting to connect device(s)
ignoring libusb_claim_interface() = -6PTP_ERROR_IO: failed to open session, trying again after resetting USB interface
LIBMTP libusb: Attempt to reset device
ignoring libusb_claim_interface() = -6LIBMTP PANIC: failed to open session on second attempt
Unable to open raw device 0
OK.

Similar questions, but not helpful: Ubuntu 18.04 does not connect to Android smartphone, Samsung USB not showing in Ubuntu 18.04, Android 6.0 mtp device not showing in Nautilus.

Best Answer

The solution is to reinstall Nautilus:

sudo apt-get remove nautilus
sudo apt-get install nautilus

I've found the results of the installation command especially interesting:

The following additional packages will be installed:
  gvfs-backends
(...)
Selecting previously unselected package gvfs-backends.
(...)
Setting up gvfs-backends (1.36.1-0ubuntu1) ...

It is possible I've removed gvfs-backends unwittingly while playing around with network and SMB.