I, like many others, own a Motorola Razr; mine happens to be the v3 version but this should work for others as well. When I was still running Windows XP, I used the official software suite from Motorola to interact with my phone (Motorola Phone Tools). However, when switching to Linux (specifically Kubuntu), I noticed there was no native support for this phone.
Enter in the wonderful community of Open Source Software (OSS)! Some wonderful programmers out there have created a fantastic little tool call moto4lin. This allows you to communicate with your phone, upload pictures and ringtones, etc.
I had a problem, however, getting moto4lin to actually recognize and utilize my phone. Even after a long time spent on Google looking for an answer lead me down some dead ends.
Here is my quick-and-dirty tutorial on how to access your phone from Ubuntu using a standard mini-USB cable. If you own a digital camera, it likely came with one of these cables. Simply check to see if it fits in the Razr’s charger port; if it does, you’re golden!
- Install moto4lin
$ sudo apt-get install moto4lin
- Plug in your Razr
- Run moto4lin (as root)
$ sudo moto4lin
- Edit preferences
- You can try simply clicking on “Connect/Disconnect” to see if it works, but it didn’t for me. Click the “Preferences” button.
- Click the “Update List” button at the bottom and select the phone entry (will say “Motorola, Inc” under “Manufacturer”)
- Change the “ACM Device” to read “/dev/ttyACM0” (that is a zero, not an o)
- Click the “Switch to P2K” button
- Click “OK”
- Connect to your phone
When you click the “Connect/Disconnect” button, the status box should now read “[Info] Phone now pluged as P2K” (programmers don’t need no spelling/grammar lessons 😉 Now, to get a list of files from your phone, simply click on the “Update List” button.
Have fun! And please let me know if this does or does not work for you…
Matt Said:
on January 1, 2008 at 4:58 am
Thanks a whole bunch this helped me i was trying to find a way to connect and this worked thanks =D
Ryan Said:
on May 15, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Unfortunately I have had no such luck with my new Razr. Neither /dev entry was created on my system. I’m running 8.04 upgraded from 7.04 and 7.10.
Bob Said:
on August 28, 2008 at 1:56 pm
I have a KRZR K1 phone and this doesn’t work. I can see picture files on the phone but they won’t download.
Gouranga Said:
on November 2, 2008 at 9:43 am
Hi – you little angel.
If I can do (I am a 61 year old pensioner) anyone can. And I can download my photos to the PC.
Thank you very much!
Morgan Said:
on April 20, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Great, thanks.
Has anyone figured out how to sync their RAZR V3 calendar with their linux machine? (I’m on Ubuntu 8.10). I can’t figure out how to do it with moto4lin; kmobiletools doesn’t appear to offer that option, and wammu only gives me an error when trying to download the calendar (but is fine with contacts).
Thanks!
-Morgan
chris Said:
on November 2, 2009 at 11:30 pm
well i have the motorola ve240 metro pcs and i tryed to connect it and nothing happend can you help me??……
Murpholino Peligro Said:
on August 27, 2011 at 11:03 am
I have moto ve240
try to connect with moto4lin ubuntu 11.04
Try to connect
[info] Phone connected as P2K
[info] Sending control message failed.. Retry…
[error] Unable to get phone model
[info] Sending control message failed.. Retry…
[error] Unable to get drive name
[info] Sending control message failed.. Retry…
[error] Unable to get file count
[info] Sending control message failed.. Retry…
[error] Unable to get drive name
nothing 😦
Psychoticus Rex Said:
on June 16, 2016 at 2:28 pm
With Ubuntu 16 (or later) you’ll find you’re far removed from the moto4lin package.
Trying to find a solution myself I found nothing up to date or upward compatible, and too many know-nothings spew useless forum-filling info like: 1)get a new phone, 2)just plug it into your USB, 3) just use bluetooth, idiotically not realizing that phones like the Motorola RAZR v3 PREDATE some, most or all of those standards!
The only software ever released was for Windows and IT was glitchy, proprietary, never extensible to other OS’s and is now deprecated. Frankly for some phones moto4lin was IT in terms of how to sanely and reproducibly access your phones insides.
I’m writting this comment in the hopes that I can use it the next bloody time I have to install a Debian based OS after a H/W fault and I can’t remember how to access my ancient phone; if you find it helpfull, good for you. 🙂 The original author of this post had it exactly right, it just needs a 2016+ update. 🙂
To install moto4lin now you need to install it from the latest version of Ubuntu that carried the package (Lucid lenny). So use your package manager or use vi or vim to edit your sources.list file (in sudo or admin mode)to include the line (temporarily)
“deb http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid main restricted universe multiverse”
(With all of these, upon one line and skip the quotes.)
Then do the following command:
“sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install moto4lin”
Next go back into your sources.list file or use your graphical package manager to disable the lucid repository (Putting a # in front of the word deb in the apt line is fine.) to prevent version/incompatibility issues down the road on other packages.
Then run the command:
“sudo apt-get update”
This will truncate the list of packages back to the version of ubuntu you’re using now.
Finally you might want to make a launcher on your desktop, I found it helpful to run it in “terminal mode” and using the execution line: “sudo /usr/bin/moto4lin” just so I didn’t get any unexpected security headaches.
Thanks to the author, you helped me loads. 🙂
Psychoticus Rex Said:
on July 10, 2016 at 7:40 pm
And now the late 2016 update…
It appears Ubuntu has discontinued support for lucid, it may have an archive, but i couldn’t be bothered looking for it; in Debian squeeze was the equivalent but it had already depricated by that version so back one more to lenny and voila Debian – Lenny has a copy of moto4lin….yeah, so as above but use the line:
“deb http://archive.debian.org/debian/ lenny main”
in your /etc/apt/sources.list file instead of the one i mentioned…
Good Enough!