News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Apple Stole My Music. Parent comment

Re:Apple Stole My Music by leephillips on Thursday May 05, 2016 @10:04AM (#11636181)
Yes, it's MTP with my current phone and linux installation. Is there a problem with this? After I figured out where the filesystem was mounted (a bit of a pain), I could use it like a normal mount, as if it were an external USB drive.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Apple Stole My Music by digi_owl on Thursday May 05, 2016 @11:58AM (#11637211)
MTP is a bit of a mess.

First off, file access is mediated via software on the Android side. What you are seeing is a database representation of the device FS. And this database can be incorrect (people have in the past deleted folders they thought were empty only to lose files) or used to implement DRM.

Second, it is bloody slow.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Apple Stole My Music by leephillips on Thursday May 05, 2016 @12:13PM (#11637355)
Interesting. Is there a way to bypass this and mount the phone as an ordinary filesystem, as in the old days?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Apple Stole My Music by digi_owl on Thursday May 05, 2016 @12:26PM (#11637487)
Depends on the device. Some offer it, some don't. And those that offer it run into the issue of having partitioned internal storage.

The one benefit of MTP is that Android do not have to unmount the FS you are trying to access.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Apple Stole My Music by Natanael_L on Thursday May 05, 2016 @12:27PM (#11637499)
You need a Linux kernel that offers the feature over the USB port
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Apple Stole My Music by zeveb on Thursday May 05, 2016 @10:36AM (#11636430)
> Yes, it's MTP with my current phone and linux installation. Is there a problem with this?

For the longest time MTP & Linux was terribly painful, verging on unusable, while mass storage worked perfectly. It bit when I upgraded my Nexus phone and discovered I couldn't get to the files stored on it.

Fortunately, all seems to work well now.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Apple Stole My Music by ansible on Thursday May 05, 2016 @02:43PM (#11638716)
The reason for implementing MTP instead of mass storage was clear, because you couldn't / wouldn't be able to access the files from the phone while the computer was accessing them. So I understand why they went in that direction.

But oh my goodness! MTP support on Linux was terrible for a while, and even on Windows it wasn't fast and reliable. It was easier at the time to just use a service like Dropbox to transfer files to/from the phone, than to use USB.

[ Parent | on HN ]