I have a Market app and an Atrix user has reported a problem. My app uses Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory() to get the phone's user storage location to keep the user's files. However, with the Atrix there seems to be both internal AND external storage, and Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory() only returns the handle to the INTERNAL storage.
How can I get the location of the EXTERNAL storage area for the Atrix? (Hopefully this will not require a hard-coded check of Build.MODEL. But, if it does, what is the Build.MODEL value for the Atrix?)
Thanks for your help,
Blake
I'm no dev / programmer, but try:
/mnt/sdcard-ext/<user folder>
This is the storage path I give Titanium backup to accesses the external sdcard storage. Hope this helps.
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Moved as not android development
Actually this is a question directly related to android app development...
You may want to take a look at the Motorola Atrix SDK add-ons that are posted in the Dev forum. There might be additional functions/activities available that you can call when your app is on an Atrix.
I normally agree with mods, but I have to agree with agentdr8 here: I think this is a fair question to ask in Android Development.
In any case, if you wanted a broader method, I'd suggest querying /proc/mounts and filtering out invalid results. Chances are that everything that's mounted as vfat would be fair game, barring stuff like /mnt/secure.
you can get external sdcard directory
MotoEnvironment.getExternalAltStorageDirectory()
Hi,
It is good to be back on android, I was quite follower of it when I had hero, then came iPhone 4, now with one day of galaxy s 2--- I am admiring the handset & user interface as well( admiring both is quite rare in android world )
So back to question: Did any of you helpful people know what is this data encryption, when I used native samsung email client for my work email, it kinda asked me wheather I wanted to encrypt the internal memory, without looking much i just selected yes, but now when i wanted to find where these settings are, they are nowhere to be found, any ideas what this is about, i am kinda confused in here.
Can't find the promised encryption
I found that initramfs has quite a lot of code related to filesystem encryption of data usb and sdcard. I can't find where to enable it. Anyone knows anything about this? All product marketing PDFs talk about "Business Experience" that supposedly includes "H/W encryption".
Just want a yes or no from an android boffin.
Cheers
Linux does so Android could.
That would be interesting to make the internal and external storage appear as one.
I agree with this idea, but, what popup in my mind is, what happen if one of the disk failed? most high risk is, sdcard damage.
All data or some can be retrieve?
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
Hello all, I have received a TON of false positives in my search for whether this is even possible.
In windows, a shortcut to a file or folder can be stored in any folder.
So far in Android, a shortcut can only be placed on the home screen, and AFAIK does not have a corresponding file that can be found in the root browser.
I am trying to trick Handshaker into giving me access to my EXTERNAL SD, and the only way I can think of is to create a shortcut somewhere on the internal SD that zips on over to the card where all my media (100Gb+) is stored.
I'm on a OPX, so internal storage BARELY COVERS apps. No switcheroo action is reasonably doable.
As an aside, is this whole Mac incompatibility thing a vestigial grudge? It must take a lot of effort to KEEP usb from working as it should. Are there other apps besides the "works when it feels like it" Android File Transfer or "installs weird **** on your phone" HandShaker that allow you to move around YOUR OWN FILES without using the cloud? The amount of web silence and lack of development is stunning to me. Maybe I need to refine my search terms?? Unlikely. I've tried many tens of iterations.
The search for answers here results in a mountain of false-positives as well.
Thanks for taking the time to at least read this.
Cheers.