"insufficient permissions for device"

Yes, another of those note-to-self posts, since each time I try to connect a new device to the computer I've already forgotten how this is done :-) Here are the official instructions, with a list of vendor IDs. If your vendor is not on this list, try to find out the vendor id by connecting the device with USB and running:


lsusb

For example, if we got this output:


Bus 001 Device 008: ID 0fce:615d Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB

the vendor ID is 0fce, i.e. the four numbers to the left of the semicolon on the left of the Vendor name (gee! this is overcomplicated!)

Then /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules must be edited (by root) and the proper vendor must be added. For example:


SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="0fce", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"

Now I still haven't exactly found which steps are really necessary and in which order, but seems that you might need to do some or all of the following actions so that the device is finally recognised:

  • unplug the phone, maybe disable and enable USB debugging in it
  • kill and restart the adb server: bash adb kill-server; adb start-server
  • restart the udev service: bash sudo restart udev