bsd android tethering using USB cable - intermittent failure

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‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Tuesday, February 5, 2019 12:34 PM, Julian H. Stacey <jhs at berklix.com> wrote:

> Matthias Apitz wrote:
>
> > El día Tuesday, February 05, 2019 a las 02:36:59PM +0100, Julian H. Stacey escribió:
> >
> > > Hi hackers@,
> > > I tether Androids to FreeBSDs using USB cables, Using
> > > ports/devel/android-tools-adb Mostly it works, but sometimes fails to
> > > connect, I've no idea why.
> > > I've tried: different physical androids, different versions of android (4 & 5),
> > > different physical ports (once I had a cable hanging down didnt connect on
> > > laptop socket), via hub & direct avoiding usb hub, different FreeBSDs
> > > (all of 10.4-RELEASE 11.2-RELEASE 13.0-CURRENT), 2 different FreeBSD PCs
> > > Could someone please please take a look at
> > > http://www.berklix.org/android/#adb
> > > & perhaps spot what I'm forgetting to initialise ?
> >
> > With my Ubuntu Phone (which has as well an Android kernel behind the
> > scenes), I learned that one must enable developer mode and even with
> > this on connect the display must be unlocked and a pop up answered
> > about the permission.
>
> Thanks , Yes I've got developer mode on (7 taps on build version)
> & dont know how to lock display so always on, & yes I do always
> touch screen to tether.
>
> Ive tried rebooting BSD today didnt help. Dont think ive tried
> rebooting the Androids today. I wondered if I had some hidden
> faulty initialiser file so just removed a bunch of ~/.[a-zA-Z]*
> that I didnt recognise or didnt want.
>
> Weirdly, adb shell has now just connected on the phone I want to
> move data on.
>
> & also weirdly ifconfig -a
> does Not display a ue0: eg from past:
> ue0: flags=8802<BROADCAST,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
>
>     	ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
>
>
> though I thought I needed ue to tether with,
> ifconfig -a just shows ether & local bge0: & lo0:
>
> Unfortunately my background devd set up the connection before I
> killed it & switched to foreground /sbin/devd -d so xterm scroll
> back does not show what device, but I grabbed a tar copy of /dev
> to look at later
>
> My Android popped up with a less often seen screen: USB PC Connection
> Connect as
> Media device (MTP) which shows pre-ticked Green
> Camera (PTP) which shows blank, un-checked.
>
> Well I wont disturb that pair of devs that are ready to talk,
> I'll start long transfer of data I need,
>
> but I will contine to experiment on another pair of devs,
>
> Cheers,
> Julian
>


I've done the android connect on FreeBSD quite often without any trouble, for years, however one time it acted the way you described I decided it was a crappy cable. I threw the cable in the trash and totally stopped having that problem. (just in case you didn't try different cables)

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