If you happen upon a device which libmtp claims it cannot autodetect, please submit the vendor ID and device ID as a bug, patch or feature request on the Sourceforge bug tracker at our homepage. If it gives a sensible output from "mtp-detect" then please attach the result as well as it teaches us some stuff about your device. If you've done some additional hacking, join our mailinglist and post your experiences there.
If you want to be able to hack some more and you're not afraid of C hacking, add an entry for your device's vendor/product ID and a descriptive string to the database in the file src/libusb-glue.c. It is close to the top of the file.
If you want to poke around to see if your device has some special peculiarities, you can test some special device flags (defined in src/libusb-glue.h) by inserting them together with your device entry in src/libusb-glue.c. Flags can be tested in isolation or catenated with "|" (binary OR). If relatives to your device use a certain flag, chances are high that a new device will need it too, typically from the same manufacturer.
The most common flag that needs to be set is the DEVICE_FLAG_UNLOAD_DRIVER that detach any Linux kernel drivers that may have attached to the device making MTP access impossible.
If your device is very problematic we are curious of how it works under Windows, so we enjoy reading USB packet sniffs that reveal the low-level traffic carried out between Windows Media Player and your device. This can be done using the trial version of HHD Softwares software-only USB monitor. You need to get a copy of version 2.37 since the newer trial versions won't let you carry out the needed packet sniffs. (As of 2007-05-11 a copy can be found at: http://www.cobbleware.com/files/usb-monitor-237.exe) There are other USB monitors as well, some more expensive alternatives use hardware and even measure electronic characteristics of the traffic (which is far too much detail for us).
If you are a device vendor, please consider assigning one of your employees as a contact person for libmtp, have them sign up to the libmtp development list and answer questions and post new device ID:s as they are released to our mailing list. By the way: do you have spare devices you can give us? Send them to Richard (Mac support) or Linus (Linux support). (So far nobody did that except for Microsoft who sent us a Zune by proxy!)
