I have a Samsung Galaxy S2. To update it the official way, you need Windows and Samsung Kies (an application that does the updating). The unofficial way lets you do it with a Linux-native application called Heimdell. To start things off, you need to put the phone in "download mode" which involves restarting the phone, holding the home and volume-down buttons while turning it on. I'm fine up to that point.

The problem comes when plugging it into Ubuntu. I plug it in, Heimdell doesn't see anything and can't continue.

Additionally, lsusb stalls for a very long time and then fails to show the Samsung. If I unplug the phone lsusb works just fine. The phone seems to be the problem, for some reason.

I've tried this with an Ubuntu laptop (on 64bit 2.6.38 - just as the desktop) and it registers fine. lsusb works as expected but Heimdall has some other issues.

I want to get this working on my desktop because then I can let VirtualBox take the USB device and I can flash it with Odin (another tool from Samsung). But as it is, the system doesn't see the phone, so I can't pass it off.

Where should I be looking for debugging information?

Watching dmesg | tail for a while shows something like this:

[167976.600142] usb 6-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 4

[167991.709360] usb 6-1: device descriptor read/64, error -110

[168006.928436] usb 6-1: device descriptor read/64, error -110

[168007.158227] usb 6-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 5

[168022.267425] usb 6-1: device descriptor read/64, error -110

[168037.486529] usb 6-1: device descriptor read/64, error -110

[168037.717116] usb 6-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 6

[168043.132523] usb 6-1: device not accepting address 6, error -84

[168043.252408] usb 6-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 7

The longer I watch it, the more of those messages I see.

/var/log/udev doesn't show anything new when plugging it in.