You don't have to jailbreak your Iphone with Ubuntu however you will probably have to add a new "PPA source" to your Ubuntu installation to get the required packages for Ubuntu to Recognise your phone.
The ppa you will need to add is ppa:pmcenery/ppa to add this open a Terminal from the accessories menu and type this at the prompt.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pmcenery/ppa
and hit enter once this has been added type this command in the same terminal
sudo apt-get update
and after
sudo apt-get upgrade
this should upgrade your package libimobiledevice to version 1.0.4 from 1.0.1 enabling you to access your Iphone
PPA Reference:
edit
Having had a a good look around for Idevice mounting tutorials I found this at ubuntugeek it goes through the procedure of manually mounting the device including all of the required packages and file edits to get this to work hopefully this is the solution to your problem. Bearing in mind that the tutorial was written for Ubuntu 9.10 and for an Ipod touch there is a quote at the end of the tutorial
Update from our reader :- It works for
Iphone 3g. But at the end of
preparation procedure you need to
restart both your computer and the
iPhone device.
Edit 2
if you receive this error message when trying to mount with Ifuse
GNUTLS ERROR: A TLS packet with unexpected length was received
You need to pair the phone with your pc to do this enter this command
idevicepair unpair
Your Iphone or other Idevice will automatically try to re-pair. You can then unplug it and plug it back in and it should mount correctly.
The proplem was I wasn't part of the vboxuser group. For those with the same problem:
First make sure you have the Virtualbox Extension Pack, this allows use of usb 2.0. usb 3.0 is not yet supported.
Added yourself to the vboxuser group:
sudo usermod -a -G vboxusers <useruame>
Log out then back in for the change to take effect
Enable USB 2.0 (EHCI) controller in the settings for you vm
If you need more help see this topic
Credit to Takkat
Best Answer
On your Ubuntu host system, add yourself to the vboxusers group using the following command:
sudo usermod -a -G vboxusers $USERAfter that, logout, then login again and start the virtual machine again.
Good luck!