Hey !
I've searched the web as well as the forum but i didn't find any solution and it seems i'm not the only one wanting to do that.
Is it possible to see hidden folders of internal sdcard through MTP ?
I really talk about hidden folder like ".android_secure", not the photos that aren't yet scanned by the media scanner service.
In my windows environment i already set the view all hidden files/folders as well as view system files.
If i have to change folders permissions through terminal what are the correct permissions i should put ?
Thanks for the help !!
Am i the only having that problem ?
Do you guys see the hidden folders through mtp connexion ?
If you'd bother reading a bit before asking questions, you might have the answer already.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Transfer_Protocol
MTP and PTP specifically overcome this issue by making the unit of managed storage a local file rather than an entire (possibly very large) unit of mass storage at the block level. In this way, MTP works like a transactional file system - either the entire file is written/read or nothing.
More or less, it is designed to keep hidden what should be hidden stick to USB storage or FTP/SCP.
PS: can't believe we're using a transfer protocol designed by Microsoft in a Linux-based system mastered by Google. The horror, the pain... no wonder it doesn't work on my Mac!
VAXXi said:
If you'd bother reading a bit before asking questions, you might have the answer already.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Transfer_Protocol
MTP and PTP specifically overcome this issue by making the unit of managed storage a local file rather than an entire (possibly very large) unit of mass storage at the block level. In this way, MTP works like a transactional file system - either the entire file is written/read or nothing.
More or less, it is designed to keep hidden what should be hidden stick to USB storage or FTP/SCP.
PS: can't believe we're using a transfer protocol designed by Microsoft in a Linux-based system mastered by Google. The horror, the pain... no wonder it doesn't work on my Mac!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thx for the link ! I knew what mtp is but its always good to refresh things up
I read the whole article and unfortunately it doesn't answer my question.
I understood that its the same for all of us meaning that we are not able to see hidden folders.
But the main question is if there is a way to bypass this behavior ? Where is this defined exactly ?
It seems according to the article that its not on the file permission layer ? Should it be at partition level ? How can mtp know what to share with the host ?
It's not a "behaviour" per se, but more/less a database. Remember that media scanner program which wakes up every time you change something on your SD card, be it internal or external ? it simply keeps a "database" of files which are presented to the MTP client (your computer) and hides away the phone's internal folders which are not supposed to be seen by the end-user.
Theoretically, this is done in order to have the iPhone-like behaviour: seeing the entire device memory as one big unified storage which you can fill as you want (no more of those partition size limitations which brought us the app2sd hacks). In my opinion, it's more or less just a small step done in order to "secure" phones for DRM protected content.
Studios and media companies require devices to have such measures of protection in order to allow you to sell media content (like movies, books, etc) and since Google wants to push its business further with the Play Store, it needs to cave in to the studios' demands. In the future, it will probably even become illegal (DMCA-style) for me to give you the information below
Back to the technical part of our show now.
At the first boot in the life of the device, Media Scanner will look under /system/media and index everything there. After that, it will scan everything under /mnt/sdcard (hence your external SD card too, if you have one, as it's mounted under /mnt/sdcard/external_sd). On some devices, you have an "internal.db" file and one "external-123xyz.db" file; that's a unique ID of the SD card which was scanned. The idea here is you might have 2-3 SD cards which you swap often, and it's not nice to do a full rescan each time you change the SD card. These databases are in /dbdata/databases/com.android.providers.media (on my phone, there is only one "external.db" for example).
So what you're looking for is a way to populate this database with all the files found by the Media Scanner. But Media Scanner doesn't want you to see the hidden folders you mentioned above. So, you get an application which doesn't ignore them, like Rescan SD Card! or SDrescan.
Happy now ?
Thank you very much i really enjoyed reading the explanation as it answers completely my questions and it makes sense !
Ill give a try to the apps but i'm also curious to investigate on those files
Cheers
PS. Is this a disguised way to support non open source protocols ?
Well, you could poke around inside the database with sqlite if you want. But don't really see what's so interesting about them.
It is just another protocol which is supported, which happens to be designed by Microsoft (and probably licensed/paid by Google to be used in Android). I understand the technical explanation behind this decision, but I'm also wary that someday UMS will be disabled by default and enabling it will disable content purchasing for that device (just like having a rooted phone now disables some "sensitive" apps, like banking and online TV).
As a system admin its interesting to know whats happening on my system
As a hobby its interesting for my personal knowledge
And from a development point of view it gives me some ideas for maybe future apps
You say that its just another protocol which is supported but to my understanding there are not so many of them ! So i would say that Google was kind of forced to use the MTP method, first from a hardware point of view and second to be compliant with the rest of the world.
Is there any other protocol that could suite their needs ? Since USB mass storage is not usable on some devices and MTP is well spead.
.HiddenAndroid folders in Win - Here Yesterday, Gone Tomorrow
<Win 7 and GN2>
What's curious and a bit frustrating to me is that, yesterday, when I mounted my device ALL of the hidden (.folders and .files) were visible and searchable. Today, when I went to explore some more, all are gone. I understand that I can use a 3rd party app, just can't figure out why it was visible yesterday and not today.
Hmmph
Did you ever resolve this issue? I really hate MTP for several reasons but this is one of the reasons why! I need to back up all my directories on the SDCard because some apps store them as hidden files in hidden directories. Furthermore, I came across the Play Store bug that requires me to delete a "temp.asec" file in the ".android_secure" directory, but of course it is not visible.
In a post further up it was suggested to use a "Rescan" app to force the DB to include hidden files/directories, but I have tried no less than 4 of these apps, and all they do is trigger the built-in android media scan, which is the problem in the first place!
So has anyone ever been able to access hidden files and directories using MTP?
EDIT: I have an HTC phone that actually shows hidden files and directories, so they have obviously implemented their own media scan. The problem I am currently having is on a Samsung phone (Epic 4G touch)
It may depend on the implementation. For example, using stock rom for the phone doesn't show some files and folders, for example folders starting with dot. But if you use Neatrom Lite it will show all files and folders.
Flash forward about 6 years and Samsung still does not show hidden folders/files when viewing the phone contents in Windows File Explorer, but HTC does.
The reason this is still a problem for me, is that I want to backup the contents of a particular directory (WhatsApp) which contains some hidden folders, so I can restore it anytime on a new phone or the same phone.
I recently switched from HTC to Samsung and alas, it seems the problem with this implementation still exists. Anyone found a workaround to this to allow File Explorer to see the hidden folders?
Update: It appears that hidden .nomedia files (and probably others) appear under regular folders, so the problem is limited to hidden folders themselves
does anyone know how to share a folder with only certain android users on my network?
I can find info to do it with two windows machines. from what i understand you have to create the user name of the viewing machine in the computer that hosts the folder. but how would I do that with an androd device.
when I right click computer/manage/shared folders/shares.
then right click a folder/properties/share permissions/add/advanced/find now.
i get a list of user types but i have no idea how to add just one android device or what to type in as the name
I have tried using the name of my phone on an evo 3d i went to settings/about phone/phone identity. but i figured that wouldnt work anyway.
I have no idea about winbugs share tool, but an easy way is to use Dropbox to store the folder. Then, you can install the app and log in using the same user and password on several devices.
that is a good way to share. but is not a ideal for large files or streaming over my network.
I'm looking for a great syncronisation app (free or paid). I would like to have a folder on my pc in which I place files (docs, music, ...) and then these files get syncronised to all of my Android devices. I know that Dropbox or Box provide these services, but I'm looking for a specific app that can store these files in a specific, selected folder on my SD card (so that all files are offline accessible, music will be in my library on my phone automatic, ...) I also would like it if this would happen automatic, so no tagging each file for offline storage. Is there an app that can do this? Or will I be able to use my standard cloudservice app, CloudCube, for this (I can't seem to find this setting, but I really enjoy this app!) ? Thank you very much in advance.
Hi guys,
I'm trying to get a lil' privacy here
I know right now it's rather hard, but I'm trying to take my steps. So far setting Seacloud with https and encryption on a 2TB HDD wasn't too hard. Problem is, it doesn't upload the phone pictures to the server, at the moment. A second solution would be to have an app to sync those pictures to a network drive, which is already on Seafile, and would be then automatically backed up. This could be done via SMB or SCP/SFTP. Do you know of any apps doing this, copying any new detected file within an specifed folder to a network share?
PS: Yeah yeah, I know owncloud does this out of the box. Their apps are far better for this, but the way they store their filesystem isn't very clean IMHO, so I preferred seacloud instead (owncloud uses normal files for its storage, which can lead to issues implementing file history, while seacloud uses a database structure).
i would like to know the meaning of various protocols i have seen in URIs that XPrivacy is showing me.
for example, i notice Google Account Manager is trying to access something at content://media/external/images/... what exactly is that referencing? there is no /media directory on the filesystem...
also noticed some references to content://com.google.android.gms.download/download/libappdatasearchext_armeabi_v7a.so for example, but i don't exactly see that either... there's a /data/data/com.google.android.gms/app_download/ but it doesn't have that .so file in it. in fact 'find' didn't find that file anywhere in the filesystem...
i thought i saw some other protocols besides "content" but can't seem to find those right now in my XPrivacy logs... here's another one: android.resource://
sorry really new to Android, thanks