MTP

Summary

MTP is the "Media Transfer Protocol" and is used by many MP3 players such as the Creative Zen and some Walkmans. In addition, Android phones and tablets use it since version 3.0. It is part of the "Windows Media" Framework and has close relationship with Windows Media Player.

Using MTP With Arch

Installation

MTP support is provided by the libmtp package, to install:

   pacman -S libmtp

Note: This package is out of date. The current version is available in the AUR as libmtp-updated.

You then get a number of tools to use from the command line (such as mtp-detect). Use:

   mtp-detect

to detect/connect to the device.

Using media players

You can also use your mtp device in music players such as amaroK. To do this you may have to edit "/etc/udev/rules.d/65-libmtp.rules": To do this run:

   lsusb -v

and look for your device, it will be something like:

   Bus 002 Device 007: ID 072b:4847 W Technology

in which case the entry would be:

   SYSFS{idVendor}=="072b", SYSFS{idProduct}=="4847", SYMLINK+="libmtp-%k", MODE="666"

Note: After installing MTP you may have to reboot for your device to be recognised

mtpfs

Mtpfs is FUSE filesystem that supports reading and writing from any MTP device. Basically it allows you to mount your device as an external drive.
It's available in the community repository.

• To mount your device

# mtpfs -o allow_other /media/YOURMOUNTPOINT

• To unmount your device

# umount /media/YOURMOUNTPOINT