Orphaning: mtpfs (FUSE filesystem for MTP devices like Android tablets)

[Richard W.M. Jones]

I've orphaned this package.  There are various
reasons for this:

(1) It's buggy: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/bugs/mtpfs

(2) Upstream is not responsive.  The weight of developer effort seems
to have moved to several alternative projects, and it's probably
worthwhile adopting one of these and deprecating mtpfs.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=841260#c1

(3) I don't use it any more.  I just gave up trying to get files off
Android tablets.  WTF don't they support USB mass storage like every
other thing out there?

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
Read my programming blog: http://rwmj.wordpress.com
Fedora now supports 80 OCaml packages (the OPEN alternative to F#)
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[Peter Robinson]

On 17 Sep 2012 16:15, "Richard W.M. Jones" <rjones(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
>  I've orphaned this package.  There are various
>  reasons for this:
>
>  (1) It's buggy: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/bugs/mtpfs
>
>  (2) Upstream is not responsive.  The weight of developer effort seems
>  to have moved to several alternative projects, and it's probably
>  worthwhile adopting one of these and deprecating mtpfs.
>  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=841260#c1
>
>  (3) I don't use it any more.  I just gave up trying to get files off
>  Android tablets.  WTF don't they support USB mass storage like every
>  other thing out there? 
My understanding is that its so both the phone and computer can read/write
to the filesystem at the same time. It was needed to be able to move apps
to secondary storages amongst other things.

Peter

>  Rich.
>
>  --
>  Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat 
http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
>  Read my programming blog: http://rwmj.wordpress.com
>  Fedora now supports 80 OCaml packages (the OPEN alternative to F#)
>  http://cocan.org/getting_started_with_ocaml_on_red_hat_and_fedora
>  --
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[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 02:37:34PM +0100, Peter Robinson wrote:
>  On 17 Sep 2012 16:15, "Richard W.M. Jones"
> <rjones(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
>  >
>  >
>  > I've orphaned this package.  There are various
>  > reasons for this:
>  >
>  > (1) It's buggy: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/bugs/mtpfs
>  >
>  > (2) Upstream is not responsive.  The weight of developer effort seems
>  > to have moved to several alternative projects, and it's probably
>  > worthwhile adopting one of these and deprecating mtpfs.
>  > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=841260#c1
>  >
>  > (3) I don't use it any more.  I just gave up trying to get files off
>  > Android tablets.  WTF don't they support USB mass storage like every
>  > other thing out there?
>  
>  My understanding is that its so both the phone and computer can read/write
>  to the filesystem at the same time. It was needed to be able to move apps
>  to secondary storages amongst other things. 
Right - I knew there was a reason for this.  It's because USB mass
storage exposes the disk as blocks, whereas MTP exposes it as files.
Thanks for setting me right Peter!

Anyway, mtpfs - please someone take it over, fix it, kill it, or
package one of the alternatives.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
virt-top is 'top' for virtual machines.  Tiny program with many
powerful monitoring features, net stats, disk stats, logging, etc.
http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-top

[Simone Caronni]

>  On 17 Sep 2012 16:15, "Richard W.M. Jones"
> <rjones(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
>  > (3) I don't use it any more.  I just gave up trying to get files off
>  > Android tablets.  WTF don't they support USB mass storage like every
>  > other thing out there? 
I have a few devices, up to android 2.3.x block storage was the default,
since version 4.0.x you have the option to switch between mtp, block
storage and camera mode. It's up to the user.

Regards,
--Simone

[Dennis Gilmore]

It entirely depends on the device you can only export sdcards as block storage. For
devices like the galaxy nexus and nexus 7 that only have internal storage you can only use
mtp or ptp I've found that digikam does a horrible job of trying to pull photos when
in ptp mode.

Simone Caronni <negativo17(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

> > On 17 Sep 2012 16:15, "Richard W.M. Jones"
> <rjones(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
> > > (3) I don't use it any more.  I just gave up trying to get files
> off
> > > Android tablets.  WTF don't they support USB mass storage like
> every
> > > other thing out there?
>
> I have a few devices, up to android 2.3.x block storage was the
> default,
> since version 4.0.x you have the option to switch between mtp, block
> storage and camera mode. It's up to the user.
>
> Regards,
> --Simone
>
>
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[Gary Gatling]

On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 9:15 AM, Richard W.M. Jones <rjones(a)redhat.com&gt;wrote:

>  I've orphaned this package.  There are various
>  reasons for this:
>
>  (1) It's buggy: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/bugs/mtpfs
>
>  (2) Upstream is not responsive.  The weight of developer effort seems
>  to have moved to several alternative projects, and it's probably
>  worthwhile adopting one of these and deprecating mtpfs.
>  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=841260#c1
>
>  (3) I don't use it any more.  I just gave up trying to get files off
>  Android tablets.  WTF don't they support USB mass storage like every
>  other thing out there?
>
>  
I don't use android much but at work they gave me a android tablet to test
and I found that gMTP seems to work ok for copying files. Just wanted to
throw that out there in case anyone was looking / interested in packaging
one of the alternatives and in case that helps with getting your files off
such devices. I didn't like mtpfs either and it did seem pretty buggy.

Cheers,

[Ville Skyttä]

On 2012-09-17 16:15, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:

>  I just gave up trying to get files off Android tablets.
>  WTF don't they support USB mass storage like every
>  other thing out there? 
FWIW, things seem to Just Work for me with an MTP mode Galaxy Nexus in
F-17 Nautilus - plug it in via USB and it shows up just like a USB
stick, click it and wait a bit and files are shown (in addition to a
notice about them being on a digital audio player and a button for
opening Rhythmbox). Moving files to/from it appears to work fine too.

[Neal Becker]

Richard W.M. Jones wrote:

>  
>  I've orphaned this package.  There are various
>  reasons for this:
>  
>  (1) It's buggy: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/bugs/mtpfs
>  
>  (2) Upstream is not responsive.  The weight of developer effort seems
>  to have moved to several alternative projects, and it's probably
>  worthwhile adopting one of these and deprecating mtpfs.
>  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=841260#c1
>  
>  (3) I don't use it any more.  I just gave up trying to get files off
>  Android tablets.  WTF don't they support USB mass storage like every
>  other thing out there?
>  
>  Rich.
>   
I gave up on usb transfer - just use airdroid instead.

[Sérgio Basto]

On Seg, 2012-09-17 at 14:15 +0100, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
>  (3) I don't use it any more.  I just gave up trying to get files
> off
>  Android tablets.  WTF don't they support USB mass storage like every
>  other thing out there?  
Android 2.1 and 2.3 have "USB mass storage" has option.
But this holidays , I try transfer photos from a friend machine and
others situation .... Canon , Nokia , JVC all by default use MTP,
this fuse mtp should IMHO be a default in ours Fedora system.  
I had no idea of their existence ( mtpfs) I going to test it now. 
Thanks, 

Sérgio M. B.

simple-mtpfs Re: Orphaning: mtpfs (FUSE filesystem for MTP devices like Android tablets)

[Sérgio Basto]

On Ter, 2012-09-18 at 16:31 +0100, Sérgio Basto wrote: 
>  On Seg, 2012-09-17 at 14:15 +0100, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
>  > (3) I don't use it any more.  I just gave up trying to get files off
>  > Android tablets.  WTF don't they support USB mass storage like every
>  > other thing out there? 
>  
>  Android 2.1 and 2.3 have "USB mass storage" has option.
>  But this holidays , I try transfer photos from a friend machine and
>  others situation .... Canon , Nokia , JVC all by default use MTP,
>  this fuse mtp should IMHO be a default in ours Fedora system.  
>  I had no idea of their existence ( mtpfs) I going to test it now. 
>  Thanks,  
I found today, that package simple-mtpfs, has enter has fedora package
on 2012-10-08. A good mtp support could be awesome, for androids, you
could transfer data, while use it with applications that need use the
(micro) SD card.

Thanks, 
-- 
Sérgio M. B.

simple-mtpfs Re: Orphaning: mtpfs (FUSE filesystem for MTP devices like Android tablets)

[Chris Murphy]

On Oct 26, 2012, at 6:54 PM, Sérgio Basto <sergio(a)serjux.com&gt; wrote:
>  
>  I found today, that package simple-mtpfs, has enter has fedora package
>  on 2012-10-08. A good mtp support could be awesome, for androids, you
>  could transfer data, while use it with applications that need use the
>  (micro) SD card. 

MTP allows for use with USB, TCP/IP, Bluetooth, etc. And doesn't take complete control
over the storage as a block level device, the granularity is a file, rather than blocks.

What are the DRM implications of MTP? Apparently this is a key part of MTP.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff632508(prot.20).aspx

Chris Murphy

simple-mtpfs Re: Orphaning: mtpfs (FUSE filesystem for MTP devices like Android tablets)

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Sat, Oct 27, 2012 at 09:04:25AM -0600, Chris Murphy wrote:
>  
>  On Oct 26, 2012, at 6:54 PM, Sérgio Basto <sergio(a)serjux.com&gt; wrote:
>  > 
>  > I found today, that package simple-mtpfs, has enter has fedora package
>  > on 2012-10-08. A good mtp support could be awesome, for androids, you
>  > could transfer data, while use it with applications that need use the
>  > (micro) SD card.
>  
>  
>  MTP allows for use with USB, TCP/IP, Bluetooth, etc. And doesn't take complete
> control over the storage as a block level device, the granularity is a file, rather than
> blocks.
>  
>  What are the DRM implications of MTP? 
The spec for MTP is not too hard to follow:

http://www.usb.org/developers/devclass_docs/MTP_1.0.zip

MTP includes very minimal DRM, essentially just a way to flag files as
having "DRM protection" or not -- see "DRM status" in the above
document.  This doesn't mean that MTP "has" DRM.  All it means is that
the file is encrypted in some way that makes it hard to play on
another device (like Apple's .m4p files).  In other words, it's just
an extra bit of metadata about the file.

This however:

>  Apparently this is a key part of MTP.
>  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff632508(prot.20).aspx 
is an MS extension to MTP.  No idea if anyone apart from Microsoft
implement this nonsense.  It doesn't appear to have been inflicted on
any Android devices I have, and since MS have about 0.001% of the
worldwide phone/MP3 player market you probably won't see this in the
wild very much.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
virt-top is 'top' for virtual machines.  Tiny program with many
powerful monitoring features, net stats, disk stats, logging, etc.
http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-top

simple-mtpfs Re: Orphaning: mtpfs (FUSE filesystem for MTP devices like Android tablets)

[Ben Boeckel]

On Sat, Oct 27, 2012 at 15:04:25 GMT, Chris Murphy wrote:
>  What are the DRM implications of MTP? Apparently this is a key part
> of MTP.
>  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff632508(prot.20).aspx 
It reads to me as *if* you want to use AAVT, both ends need to support
it. The first sentence describes it as an MTP extension, so it doesn't
seem necessary up to the point that things start assuming it because of
prevalence.

--Ben