You may need to blacklist the cdc_phonet kernel module since it may claim the USB first. Check here: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=33543 The thread is for N800 but still happens with Maemo/Harmattan devices in some distros Also, I didn't get from your posts if you're running Ubuntu directly or in an emulator (which may be a problem). If still not in emulator, you can try downloading a live CD of some other distro and run flasher from that.