As I rejoiced in the achievement of finally finding a Linux distro which plays well with my Dell XPS 13 (2019 edition, model 9380), I plugged in my Moto test device, intending to continue working on an Android app. Pressing the Run button promptly made Android Studio (3.4) do its compilation magic, but got stopped in its tracks rather quickly. An angry-looking error message awaited me:
error: insufficient permissions for device: udev requires plugdev group membership
Android Studio also left a note pointing me to their developer page on the subject. As I suspected, it seemed I had some configuration work left to get device debugging working on Linux. However, following Google’s instructions on setting up adb didn’t do much to resolve my problem. The part about adding yourself to the udev group is important, though, as it’s linked to the actual solution described in the next paragraph.
sudo usermod -aG plugdev $LOGNAME
An ill-timed dog walk (let’s just say I hadn’t expected to be caught in the middle of a downpour), and a few mildly frustrated Google searches later, I ran across a blog post from 2013 (!) on the subject of “Adding udev rules for USB debugging Android devices“, by Janos Gyerik.
I will not pretend to know why this extra configuration is required, but it describes looking up the device’s identifier and adding it to the aforementioned plugdev access group, so Android Studio can properly access the USB device.
And there you go, a working USB debugging connection to my Android device, thanks to some great advice from 2013!
Originally posted on jarroo.com
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