How-to: Connect Android Samsung Galaxy S2 USB Storage

I was having problems connecting my Samsung Galaxy S2 over USB on Ubuntu, which is particularly annoying bearing in mind the total lack of native support by Samsung for Linux. Strange enough, it works flawlessly on Windows 7, where it recognises all the phone's storage it instantly and I can transfer files between my phone and computer.

When I plug it into a Linux machine, the phone storage is recognised and I can see the folder structures of the phone and the SD card but I cannot even see, much less access the contents of any file or folder as all the folders appear empty. They are not.
Connecting the phone via USB gives no "mount USB" option, the MTP (Media Transport Protocol) application automatically kicks in and mounts the media, sans contents!

You'll be happy to know the previous set of USB utilities is still there to use. This is a work around rather than a permanent fix. RC 

• On your android phone, go to Application->Settings
• In there, go to Wireless and Network and select USB Utilities
• Click on Connect Storage to PC, before you connect a USB cable
• A message should pop up: Connect USB cable to use mass storage
• Now connect the USB cable to computer
• The green android robot should be displayed with an option button for "Connect USB storage;" click on that.
• The green robot turns orange and now you can access the files on the internal storage and SD card of your phone.