So I hunted around again to find an alternative solution and found this brilliant extension to the solution I found earlier for transferring files from android to linux. Turns out it can work both ways and quite securely here:
The method uses the inherent capacity of the android device (in my case, Nexus One, Nexus S and Asus TF101) to act as a wireless hotspot and be an FTP server over this self-generated wireless. Any laptop can connect to this android-device generated wireless and access all the files on the android device -or just swap files back and forth. So it's like a private wireless party! You don't need to have an internet or 3G/4G/LTE phone-data connection.
I like this method infinitely more. And I am betting (e:Paul) would approve. :)
So the steps (these are for my reference just in case the original link above vanishes for some reason):
On your android device:
- Go to Settings > Wireless & Networks > Tethering & Portable hotspot
- Turn on the portable Wi-Fi hotspot.
- Configure this Wi-Fi hotspot (Give it a wacky name and a secure password - it's going to be visible to your building mates, why not send them a message?) If you want them to share your enthusiasm for dry PDFs or perhaps dodgy videos, you can even make it open and unsecure.
- Install the Wifi FTP transfer application I talked about in (e:tinypliny,56176) and turn it on.
- Now go to you linux machine, connect to the wifi spot generated by the android device
- Pull up a console. Type
Route
Something like this will come up:
At this point, my laptop and android device were not connected to the internet; just to each other. So the 192.168.43.0 is the IP of my laptop and the 192.168.43.1 is the gateway of the Wifi spot generated by the transformer (or any android device).
- Open up Nautilus > File > connect to server > type in the address of the server as 192.168.43.1 (the gateway) and the port (2121 in that wifi app on my android device). Input the password and username that you set up for the Wifi FTP service on the android device
- et voila. The android device turns up as just another folder on your laptop. You can transfer files between your asus transformer (or any android device) and laptop just like you would between any two folder.
If I can do this, you can too. Say yes to transparency. Say no to frustrations of the USB not mounting on linux (or windows) for the asus transformer without complicated methods that may or may not work.
Okay - the misgiving reached a crescendo after your comment. This method does makes me uneasy and I feel like transparency is missing. So I have found a newer method - that kind of builds on the method I found for transferring files from android to linux. It works the opposite way as well.
I had around an hour of misgiving about this. I mean what else is the application dredging out from the device? You never know. But it kind of became very desperate because I need to be done with reading around 50 odd full PDFs and skim 100 more by end of next week. I am going nuts with the lack of time for this mammoth task ahead. I got the transformer expressly to make this easier. Why not dropbox? Well because I am on a crappy DSL and dropbox bandwidth needs are ENORMOUS. With this I can transfer via the local wireless at nearly 54 MBps/
That process sounds sketchy, like why the middle man and the code. I would never trust it. Why not just use dropbox like everyone, if that is what you are going for? I am a much bigger fan of the home server. Want me to come by one day and help you figure it out.