yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] HooloovooUK:
Finally got MTP working under Fedora 16.

I compiled mtpfs and it seems to be working OK. libmtp complains that it does not recognise the device ID, but it doesn't seem to matter. I patched libmtp with the Galaxy Nexus device ID and recompiled it. So now it doesn't produce a warning when mounting the phone, but other than that no change.

I can see all files and folders that the phone stores in /mnt/sdcard. So I can access the phone in pretty much the same manner as if it supported UMS.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] Andrmgic:
I have to admit, in practice I'm liking MTP a lot more than UMS.. having to properly eject devices or initiate the mounting from within android was a pain in the ass, as well as certain apps not working while the device was plugged in due to the SD card not being available.

On my windows box it auto-mounts for me when i connect it and with google's app on my mac, it's almost as seamless.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] Chirality:
libmtp hardcodes every device it supports at compile time? WTF?
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] tylose:
Can you share the patch? And also, how is the speed compared to UMS?
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] HooloovooUK:
It hardcodes all the manufacturer and device IDs.

I just added a line to tell it that the manufacturer 0x04e8 is "Samsung" and the product 0x685c is a "Galaxy Nexus GT-I9250". I don't know if the device flags are correct, I just copied the ones above for the other Galaxy devices.

I've starred out the email addresses so this patch file wont actually work, but you get the idea:

--- music-players.h.orig 2011-12-03 23:33:03.478222919 +0000
+++ music-players.h 2011-12-03 23:33:03.481222879 +0000
@@ -268,6 +268,9 @@
{ "Samsung", 0x04e8, "Galaxy S GT-I9000", 0x6877,
DEVICE_FLAG_UNLOAD_DRIVER |
DEVICE_FLAG_LONG_TIMEOUT },
+ { "Samsung", 0x04e8, "Galaxy Nexus GT-I9250", 0x685c,
+ DEVICE_FLAG_UNLOAD_DRIVER |
+ DEVICE_FLAG_LONG_TIMEOUT },
// From: John Gorkos <*****@users.sourceforge.net> and
// Akos Maroy <*******@users.sourceforge.net>
{ "Samsung", 0x04e8, "Vibrant SGH-T959", 0x68a9,

Having done all this I discovered that it doesn't actually matter. The above stops libmtp complaining that the device it unrecognised. The version that is currently in the Fedora 16 yum repository still works fine with mtpfs it just issues the warning about an unrecognised device. So I removed my update and went back to the packaged version, just to make life easier later on when a new libmtp is released.

I'm using the version of mtpfs that I downloaded from here.

I also checked out the version from the Google SVN repo here. But it says something about it being read-only, and I couldn't get it to compile anyway.

I'm not sure yet. I only tested it by copying a few photos from my phone, and that worked fine and seemed to be as fast as I expect from USB. I'll try copying some larger files soon when I get chance and see how that works out.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] HooloovooUK:
Hmm. Well last night I could see everything in /sdcard but now I can only see the "Playlists" directory. Not sure why.

EDIT: Unplugged USB, plugged in again, and now it's working. How odd.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] Chirality:
That's absolutely insane. So the library can't support any new devices without a recompile? Who the hell writes a library for a standard protocol like that?

EDIT: oh wait, it works but will just complain. Still weird though...
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] HooloovooUK:
The average speed reported by rsync on large files seems to be around 6MB/s. But there is a long delay between initiating a file copy and the file actually starting to copy, so small files are inordinately slow.

I've just copied 4.3GB of CoPilot maps to the phone. It took two hours, which is just 0.6MB/s. And it also looks like some files failed to copy for some reason, so now I've got to try and work out which ones. I guess the library isn't perfect.

I have copied the executable that I compiled into

/usr/bin/mtpfs

And then added the following line into my /etc/fstab

mtpfs /mnt/nexus fuse users,umask=033 0 0

So now I can just do

mount /mnt/nexus

umount /mnt/nexus

in the same way that I would mount a UMS device.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] Clancy_s:
fwiw Windows 7 users have been reporting similar issues moving large numbers of files (and some problems moving very big files) so it may be a problem with mtp itself rather than libmtp ??
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] tylose:
Merging the storage is the weirdest decision of Google I have ever seen. Basically, Google solved a non-existing problem. Noone can fill up their 1 GB for apps. Even if we say an average app occupies 5 MB (actually it's much less than that), you will have to download 200 apps to your phone to be able to fill your app partition. I currently have about 60 apps and I'm actually trying to remove some of them so that my app drawer is cleaner.

Just so that you will be able to download 201 apps to your phone, you don't own your data anymore. You don't have an sdcard. You can't take it out. You can't increase its size. You can't read/write to it on most of the devices in the world (your car, your game console etc.) except Windows computers (and only if it's Vista or 7).

On Linux it is almost impossible, on Mac you have to download an unstable, slow, and problematic software and even if it works, it is not a solution integrated to your ordinary file browser.

But you can now download that 201st app you always wanted to download!

If there is any single considerable advantage of merging the two partitions, can anyone please explain it to me? Unless there is some secret partnership between Android team and Microsoft, this must have a logical explanation.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] qwerp_:
i have easily filled up my nexus s 1gb with app, and i have faced with issue where i need to keep clearing up to get updates or install new apps. (and app2SD doesn't work good enough).

i like this uniformed storage solution, apart from MTP being abit funny. but we can then rely on samba/wifi to transfer files to the phone, not necessary using a cable.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] blunden:
The biggest advantage is that they are able to use a modern filesystem without license issues while still retaining support for most modern OSes. This would not be possible without MTP/PTP since it would otherwise either require every computer you want to use it with to have ext3/4-drivers installed or they would be unable to make Android fully open source since exFAT that is otherwise the most compatible requires a license and is not available in a distributable open source version. The 4 GB filesize limit is easy to hit now so a new filesystem was a necessity.

MTP is a USB standard since 2008 so it has nothing to do with MS other than the fact that they seem to have taken the time to correctly implement the standard. They actually moved away from FAT32, a filesystem that Google might need a license from MS for, so if anything they now use less MS technology.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] HooloovooUK:
I've been experimenting with this. I've installed a file explorer that allows me to create a samba share to my linux box over wifi. It works quite well, but I have to keep touching the phone to make sure it stays awake.

I've tried setting wifi to be always on, but the phone still goes to sleep and stalls my file transfer.

How do I keep wifi on and the file explorer active when the phone goes into standby?

I see there is also an app for setting up and SSH server on the phone. That would be the easiest solution if I can just use sshfs over wifi and forget the USB completely. But I haven't tried that yet.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] Balthazar B:
Perhaps a utility like AutomateIt can configure the phone to not go to sleep when you're file copying (or running an app that does file copying)?
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] HooloovooUK:
Thanks.

I've just installed SSHDroid which starts an SSH server on the phone. It should allow me to SSH in and start a terminal, and also use sshfs to remotely access the phone filesystem. It also has an option to keep the phone awake when the app is running. Hopefully this will do what I want and mean I can forget about MTP forever.

I'll give it a try tonight when I get home.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] shenye:
MTP is fine for most uses. If you REALLY want mass storage:

root

recovery

USB mount in recovery
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] tylose:
True. They are using a modern filesystem now. But what I'm saying is, ironically this doesn't have any benefits and it actually has disadvantages to the user. Yes, for instance, ext3 supports file permissions whereas FAT32 does not. But if you consider the files written on the sdcard, they were photos, music, etc. So they were files that were supposed to be accessed globally anyway. They did not need to be secure. Data belonging to apps (which wasn't supposed to be accessed by anyone expect the app that created it) were written on the internal memory, which did support permissions.

I don't think there were any license issues to begin with. But even if there were any, Samsung (and most major Android manufacturers) already have cross-license agreements with Microsoft. Besides, almost every device and OS in the world (including Linux distributions and MacOSX) can read/write to FAT32. I don't think they are paying Microsoft for that.

Unfortunately, I have only three computers (one of them runs MacOSX, the other two Linux). None of them have native support for MTP. I don't think I am using outdated operating systems.

Yes, this might be the only real advantage. But then again, was this really an issue? I haven't seen anyone transfering 8 GB movies to their phone. Again, they are solving a non-existing problem.

As a Linux user, obviously I'm not a fan of FAT32. I would fully support a Linux-based OS favoring a real Linux filesystem. But if it's going to have zero advantages and in fact many disadvantages to the users (especially Linux and Mac users), I definitely wouldn't.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] VoicesX:
I now use AirDroid
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] HooloovooUK:
I'm now using SSHDroid over wifi.

It's a bit slow - I'm only getting around 500kB/s.

But frankly, the ease and simplicity of being able to SCP files to and from the phone, and even use sshfs to browse the real directory structure, far far outweighs and speed advantages of USB. It even works in the background with the screen off.

Right then - that's me happy.:D
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] VoicesX:
in this case is better FTPDroid.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] AllGamer:
that's a tedious work around

and while you are transferring large amount of stuff, you'll be cut off from the world, if anyone tried to call you
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] HooloovooUK:
Sorry, I don't quite understand.

Are you saying in this case FTPDroid is better? Or asking if it's better? Or agreeing with me?

Being able to use sshfs and scp is much better than transferring files with FTP. So for me, SSHDroid is way better.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] tylose:
I'm trying AirDroid now and it seems pretty cool. You can also use it with usb tethering when there is no wifi.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] forumache:
What you think is irrelevant, it does not change the facts. Maybe you will try to reformulate and use "I am not aware" instead of "I don't think". After this smart ass statement from myself, let my provide something useful to this thread:

"In February 2009, Microsoft filed a patent infringement lawsuit against TomTom alleging that the device maker's products infringe on patents related to FAT32 filesystem. As some TomTom products are based on Linux, this marked the first time that Microsoft tried to enforce its patents against the Linux platform. The lawsuit was settled out of court the following month with an agreement that Microsoft be given access to four of TomTom's patents, that TomTom will drop support for the FAT32 filesystem from its products, and that in return Microsoft not seek legal action against TomTom for the five year duration of the settlement agreement.

In October 2010, Microsoft filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Motorola alleging several patents (including two of the FAT32 filesystem patents) were not licensed for use in the Android operating system. They also submitted a complaint to the ITC."

I extracted the above information from Wikipedia, as it was easier, but I read about it when it happened, links are all over the web ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table#Licensing
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] DJTaurus:
There are a lot people like me that cannot copy photos from pc to DCIM->Camera folder (with usb debug enabled and MTP connection)......any solution to that?

The only way to copy those photos is by placing them to a folder and then copy that folder to DCIM->Camera folder.

Or to make a zip with those photos and extract them to DCIM->Camera folder.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] DebauchedSloth:
I'm guessing that adb isn't an acceptable solution?

I never really use USB mounts or any of the other solutions suggested here. Adb works fine here.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] blunden:
Well, they are clearly lagging in supporting standard protocols at least. libmtp exists though.

All 720p movies are over 4 GB (except some animated ones) so yes, it's a very real issue.

You have already been proven wrong on the licensing issues with FAT32.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] tylose:
Unfortunately, no. ADB is about 15-20 times slower than UMS so you get a speed about 500 KB/s. It is going to feel terribly slow if you are transferring 100 MB video files that you have recorded with your phone.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] h_zee13:
Can you explain how to do this?

I have airplay and I'm at work. I want to use it to transfer files to my phone because I can't use the PC to transfer files because the company has blocked that feature on our PCs.

So what do I do now?
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] tylose:
Press the menu button on the main screen of the app :)
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] funkyblue04:
Scrap that. MTP keeps cutting out and refusing to copy my TitaniumBackup folder from the phone. It starts and then cuts out. I tried a different computer and the same. There is no fast way for me to get my data off this thing! MTP is slow and buggy :(
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] tylose:
Which OS are you on?
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] funkyblue04:
Windows 7. I installed Kies and it seems to have fixed it. I was able to copy 13gb from the phone and then back after I reflashed the volume fix firmware and re-rooted.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] BANE:
I've received this phone a day or two ago now. I'm running Windows 7 64BIT and I've had success with transferring files. Initially I was having the same issues transferring photos-the transfer would just hang, but I learned that you have to switch USB modes (one for transferring video, music files etc... and a second for transferring photos. Since doing this, i've been able to drag a 1GB folder of pics into the camera folder and I've also transferred a 7+gb MKV without issue- just takes a while. BTW, not using USB debugging mode, just the native USB connection settings.

BANE
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] sblantipodi:
Windows explorer crashes when I try to copy a 500mb mkv file. Wow
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] steveeJ:
i'm on gentoo linux and mounted the storage using mtpfs.

mtpfs version: 0.9

libmtp version: 1.1.1

all the copied files have "unknown" modification time,

can someone else confirm this behaviour?

what about the windows users?

speed: i'm copying about 500mb of pictures at a rate of 684 kB/s, that's not very fast :mad:

i don't like MTP, if i did i would have bought an iPhone...

i don't see the problems in two partitions on the internal storage.

serious, who really needs access to their pictures/songs/videos if the device is connected to a computer?!

it should be possible to mix these things up, not just choose between either a second partition using FAT32 or no second partition.

if anyone doesn't like FAT32 he could still use ext4 for the second partition.

this should be no problem at all, since my htc legends' sdcard is 15gb fat32/1gb ext4, and when i turn on usb storage on the phone, the linux filemanager pops up both partitions!
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] HooloovooUK:
Yes, that happened to me under Fedora 16.

But if I recall correctly when using a file manager on the device, the timestamps were correct. It's just they didn't display correctly under mtpfs.

I got between 4MB/s and 6MB/s when I was coping large files. But there was a long delay before a file would actually start copying, so copying lots of small files was very slow.

I think the phone not being able to mount the partition while it's mounted under mass storage is only part of the issue. The main one is that having one large partition gets around the problem where the primary system partition is full so you can't install any more apps, while you still have GBs of space free on the second partition.

I''ve been using SSHDroid recently to copy files using SCP. It's much more convenient than messing around with MTP. But it's still slow - around 500KB/s.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] sblantipodi:
this MTP is ridiculous, it's slow and make windows crash.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] steveeJ:
thanks HooloovooUK for the hint with the timestamp, ASTRO shows them.

i just tried to copy music, it's a mess.

i have several subdirs in Music/ which are shown, but there are no files in it.

here's the strange thing: they show up in the music app on the phone!

i used ASTRO to search for it, the MP3s are in the ROOT DIRECTORY of the "sdcard": /mnt/sdcard !?!

does this mean i really cannot organize my MP3s using subdirectories?
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] NPS_CA:
MTP host must have some issues in ICS. If I get flaky performance and hangs in file copies, reboot of device addresses these.

I just pulled 500 MB in under 4 mins or so... working ok for me performance wise WHEN it does work.

I'm on a Mac using the Android file transfer app
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] [hfm]:
Use SMB shares. I use them with es file explorer to copy music I buy from amazon mp3 on my phone back to my synology nas.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] steveeJ:
please post your speeds and the type of wifi access point b / g / n.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] HooloovooUK:
I managed to use a file explorer to connect to a samba share on my Fedora linux box quite easily.

The problem I had was keeping the phone awake without having to touch the screen every ten seconds. Maybe I should have just tried a different file explorer.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] MontAlbert:
my work has really outdated pcs (XP) with no wifi (its a very large company so would cost heaps to upgrade them all) so mtp sucks for me- plugging my phone into the XP box is useless... unable to install any programs to make mtp work on xp...

Might try and convince IT to give me admin password to install stuff to make it work.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] Cheyse:
I think the point that some folks are trying to make here is that GN/ICS has seriously taken a step backwards. It shouldn't be this hard to connect a "smart" phone to plain old USB. As someone said on another forum: "Why can't this brand new smart phone connect to USB in my $60,000 Mercedes?". It's just one of those thing you take for granted.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] jnrbshp:
THIS

i currently use my phone to transfer media to and from my PS3

i rarely ever use PCs

this is putting a big wrench in my plans to buy a GN or any ICS device without external storage
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] steveeJ:
would this be applicable if we had the module?

http://www.linux-usb.org/gadget/file_storage.html
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] draugaz:
This module is not really of any help.

What people seem not to "dig" is that USB Storage mode is a stone age technique perhaps suitable for stupid USB sticks and similar devices. But utterly unsuitable for intelligent devices such as smartfones.

It is like to complain, that the $60,000 Mercedes does not want to run on coal or fire-wood.

But it just works?!?! Well, not really. It cripples the device as the USB Storage accesible area requires to be separated from the rest of the flash and thus fragments the available space.

For example, if I stick my NexusS into the car radio as USB storage I suddenly lose navigation, because the maps are also on that storage and suddenly unavailable to the phone. And I can't put them to the phone memory because it is too small, 2Gigs are not enough. so I am forced to choose between music or navigation. One can hardly call it "working, no problems".

This technology belongs to the technological landfill, get over it.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] Wiggz:
OK so I had my first "oh dammit" moment today. I tried to plug my phone into my car and play a podcast....obviously it failed due to the reasons stated in this thread.

Is there no third party app that can get around this or does anyone have any other ideas for managing this most simple of tasks?

Is it just simply an impossibility?
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] Balthazar B:
Some car manufacturers support MTP, and in some cases (e.g., BMW) they have for several years. Others don't, and like any technological advance, some are leaders and some are laggards. In general, though, the same fix holds: if a few years ago your car's head unit didn't let you plug in your iPod, you got a new HU. You can do that today and replace an older HU with one that's MTP-capable. No doubt there are new products showing up all the time, especially with CES coming up soon.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] Wiggz:
I was just wondering if we could get a bit of software that mounted specific folders (not beyond the wit of man) on the device which tricked hosts into thinking it was mass storage device.

Any takers?
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] draugaz:
It is not an easy task at all as the USB "mass storage device" operate on raw sectors. It does not operate on folder or file level.

The only solution would be to create an independent partition thus fragmenting the available space. Be it a "real" partition or just a "virtual" partition created inside of the file.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] lukesky:
So assuming that I wanted to do this : "The only solution would be to create an independent partition thus fragmenting the available space. Be it a "real" partition or just a "virtual" partition created inside of the file." , how would I go about doing it? I think CWM has a "Partition" option but partitioning and formatting to FAT32 will make it as a USB Mass Storage device when I plug in the USB cable?
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] Cheyse:
I think thats mostly it but I haven't tried it. Would be interested to see if anybody has gotten it work without bricking their phone.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] Wormtown:
You'd think if Google wanted to promote MTP, they could have contributed back by also writing a decent userspace MTP package.

On debian here, I've been able to download from GN, but not upload, both directly mounting with mtpfs (with thunar on XFCE) and with gMTP.

Transferring mostly with andFTP on local network. Didn't check the speeds, but fast enough.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] blkrabb1t:
If it doesn't work on car audio systems, then I'll have a really hard time justifying the nexus as my personal phone. I can do aux, but that will just create a mess of wires in my car vs usb.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] tgwaste:
so, will this let me transfer ANY file (or file type) to/from the device?
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] [hfm]:
I have no idea how fast it is. Wireless n router. It seems fast enough for me. The file manager I use doesn't report speed.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] steveeJ:
i think that is exactly what the module i mentioned does.

the page describes howto build a filesystem insde a file which can than be let's call it shared as a mass storage device.

we could use that file instead of a new partition. IMO this doesn't risk bricking at all.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] tylose:
Since 90% cars don't support MTP, you are not forced to choose between music and navigation anymore. Becuase there is no possibility of music at all anymore. So yeah, your problem is solved.