How-To Enable ADB for Kindle Fire (Ubuntu-Linux)

[sblood86]

Alright so it turns out making ADB work for the Kindle Fire under Ubuntu is just a touch more difficult than in Windows.

Thanks to Gbhil for the write up on windows it was a great jumping off point to try to figure this out.
Also thanks to the guys at XDA in IRC chat (Skourg3 in particular for helping me figure this out the first time).

Let's get down to the nitty gritty yeah?

First you will still need the entry provided by Gbhil, go ahead and set it using the echo command in a terminal.

echo 0x1949 >> ~/.android/adb_usb.ini

You can confirm that it took by using the cat command

cat ~/.android/adb_usb.ini

You should get a return of '0x1949' (plus any other rules that you may have added in the past).

Now really that should work but everytime you run adb you will have to either run it as root or using the sudo command. To allow standard user access we have to setup a udev rule.

sudo gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules

That should open up gedit for you to edit the file 51-android.rules. If this is the first time you have added any udev rules the file will be empty as gedit will have just created it for you. go ahead and add in the following.

# adb protocol for blaze / ottter (Amazon Kindle Fire)
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="1949", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0006", MODE="0660", OWNER="root", GROUP="androiddev", SYMLINK+="android%n"

Save that than add in the user group androiddev.

sudo addgroup --system androiddev

And add your username to that group.

sudo adduser <username> androiddev

Replace <username> with your primary username without the <> around it.

After that you will need to logout and log back in for these values to apply. You will probably need to restart the adb server as well.

Change directory to your platform-tools directory and run the following.

./adb kill-server
./adb start-server

Assuming all went well that should work properly and you can than connect through adb, if for some reason this doesn't work try restarting your computer (though I do not believe this is necessary).

Unfortunately the above listed rule does not apply to fastboot and so you will still need to run it as root.

 

[marunowskia]

Just confirming that this worked. Thank you very much...

Now... time to go read up on groups and user configurations for ubuntu :\

 

[moore.bryan]

I'm confused by your very first step. .ini files are Windows files, not Linux ones and there is no adb_usb.ini installed in Ubuntu.

 

[sblood86]

I'm confused by your very first step. .ini files are Windows files, not Linux ones and there is no adb_usb.ini installed in Ubuntu.

If you have the android sdk installed there is an adb_usb.ini file (in your home folder found in the hidden android config folder .android, as the OP states), being that adb is part of the sdk I would assume you do have the sdk installed (if for some reason the file is not there but the sdk is still installed, the echo command will create the file for you | obviously it would create the file even if the sdk were not installed but I don't think it works without the sdk, could be wrong there lol).

Incidentally .ini files are simply text resource files, yes they are used in windows more than any other OS but there is nothing that actually says they can't be used in other OS' (first line of wikipedia says it best 'The INI file format is an informal standard for configuration files for some platforms or software. INI files are simple text files with a basic structure composed of "sections" and "properties".', it goes on to state that they are a deprecated standard in windows but again there's no restriction to windows.

These instructions are valid and I have them mirrored on XDA where several people have confirmed this method to work (I do need to add the fastboot rule to this thread); did you actually try the above instructions or just decided they were wrong cause there was an .ini reference? If you have and something didn't work please post your errors I will gladly help you figure out what went wrong.

 

[JVene]

I know this isn't exactly a recent thread, but I signed up to reply here:

THIS WORKED!

When nothing else would.

Every other thread, article, instruction or particle of information I had found up to this thread did NOT apply the same things found here for the 51-android.rules file.

Further, none of them hinted at creating a group or account.

Whatever that does, it does IT, whatever IT is.

Many thinks.

Working in a VM (VMWare, workstation 9) - Ubuntu Linux 12.04 (updated as of 10/29), with a Windows host.