I found that after installing Lucid Lynx the Android SDK would not detect my Nexus One. Remembering that the same thing happened when I last installed the SDK on my machine I’ve decided to document the fix. I must remember to remember things.

Are things broken? If they are then you’ll see something like this:

$ adb devices
List of devices attached 
????????????	no permissions

Un-plug the USB cable from the device. Remember to moan about the Nexus One having an odd USB cable.

Create /etc/udev/rules.d/52-android.rules and add the following:

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="18d1", MODE="0666"

Rule files are parsed in lexical order.

Ensure that the rules are executable:

sudo chmod a+rx /etc/udev/rules.d/*

Check that they are executable, because I mis-read the instructions first time and completely missed this part out. What a waste of 10 minutes that was.

Restart the udev service:

sudo service udev restart

Plug the USB cable back into the phone. Wait.. Now you should be able to see the following from adb devices

$ adb devices
List of devices attached 
HT9CYP80NNNN	device

Now remind me about this post when I go looking for the same answer.

For more information consult the Ubuntu Forums.