hey guys, i have a few issues with the way KDE handles android devices when plugged in, vs the way gnome's nautilus does it.

with gnome, when you plugin your android phone, it would just show the internal sd-card as a removable flash drive, and if you had an external sd-card in the phone, it would show an additional entry for that card, in the same way as the internal card. it would show the phones storage mediums as removable flash drives, and it had an "eject" button next to each storage device's entry in the file browser, so as to enure any modified data / file system changes was synchronized before removing.

KDE's implementation of file and folder operations on the device's sd-card seems to be inadequate or broken. move operations do not work - though dolphin thinks they did. when i cut from one folder and paste into another, they show up in the new folder; and when naviagating to the original folder that contained the files/folder that were moved, they still appear (some times they don't). if they DO still appear, and you try to moved them again, they target directory does not show that it contains them (from the previous move operation), but yet dolphin will ask if you want to over write the existing files with the same name. then, after all that, there is no "eject" button for the storage device, to tell dolphin to synch/persist the fs changes.

what i really need, is to be able to [cut and paste, move, copy, delete] files and folders, and tell dolphin to synch/persist the changes (eject), the same way that you can do in gnome's nautilus. i really don't need any kind of special phone-computer synching functionality. i plugin my phone and play my music from my phone, and delete any songs i don't care much for, and eject it when i'm leaving so that i can listen to the phone music while in my car. rhythmbox does this just fine with gnome. i also need to occasionally store other kinds of files onto it via copy/paste or cut/paste (copy or move), and to modify it's file system directly, and persist the changes via an eject button which tells dolphin to synch any outstanding modifications.

i've tried connecting in MTP mode, where the phone shows up as a multimedia device, and i can access it just fine, but the file system functionality is broken, as discussed. i also tried connecting in PTP mode, where the device shows up as a camera, but in this mode there is even less (if any) file system access and functionality.

what i'd like to propose, is an option/setting in kde, to instruct it to mount the phone's storage devices as removable thumb drives, with an eject/synch button. this is most useful, and enables the user to manage their desktop more completely and conveniently, without the need to install gnome's nautilus, etc.

thanks for your time!

Have you tried right clicking on the "Removable Media" entries in the left side panel? An eject or safely remove option is usually present.

yeah, there's nothing like that there. my previous post describes what happens when the device is connected in MTP mode. when its connected in PTP mode there is no entry in dolphine's left panel (this was the mode i used with nautilus on xubuntu), but you can still open the folder for the device via the device notifier widget's options. as of the moment, it appears this functionality is missing in KDE on fedora 19.

mtp mode: http://www.mediafire.com/view/i4jkkbikb ... in-mtp.png
ptp mode: http://www.mediafire.com/view/245617s90 ... in-ptp.png

and here's the terminal output listing the versions of the various kde packages i have installed.

Code: Select all

# yum list installed kde*
...
kde-baseapps.x86_64                          4.10.5-1.fc19             @updates
kde-baseapps-libs.x86_64                     4.10.5-1.fc19             @updates
kde-filesystem.x86_64                        4-45.fc19                 @koji-override-0/$releasever
kde-partitionmanager.x86_64                  1.0.3-11.20130624svn.fc19 @updates
kde-plasma-networkmanagement.x86_64          1:0.9.0.9-1.fc19          @updates
kde-plasma-networkmanagement-libs.x86_64     1:0.9.0.9-1.fc19          @updates
kde-plasma-networkmanagement-openconnect.x86_64    1:0.9.0.9-1.fc19          @updates
kde-plasma-networkmanagement-openvpn.x86_64  1:0.9.0.9-1.fc19          @updates
kde-plasma-networkmanagement-pptp.x86_64     1:0.9.0.9-1.fc19          @updates
kde-plasma-networkmanagement-vpnc.x86_64     1:0.9.0.9-1.fc19          @updates
kde-print-manager.x86_64                     4.10.5-1.fc19             @updates
kde-runtime.x86_64                           4.10.5-1.fc19             @updates
kde-runtime-drkonqi.x86_64                   4.10.5-1.fc19             @updates
kde-runtime-flags.noarch                     4.10.5-1.fc19             @updates
kde-runtime-libs.x86_64                      4.10.5-1.fc19             @updates
kde-settings.noarch                          19-23.1.fc19              @updates
kde-settings-kdm.noarch                      19-23.fc19                @koji-override-0/$releasever
kde-settings-kdm.noarch                      19-23.1.fc19              @updates
kde-settings-ksplash.noarch                  19-23.1.fc19              @updates
kde-settings-plasma.noarch                   19-23.1.fc19              @updates
kde-settings-pulseaudio.noarch               19-23.1.fc19              @updates
kde-workspace.x86_64                         4.10.5-3.fc19             @updates
kde-workspace-libs.x86_64                    4.10.5-3.fc19             @updates
kdegames-minimal.noarch                      6:4.10.5-1.fc19           @updates
kdegraphics-strigi-analyzer.x86_64           4.10.5-1.fc19             @updates
kdegraphics-thumbnailers.x86_64              4.10.5-1.fc19             @updates
kdelibs.x86_64                               6:4.10.5-1.fc19           @updates
kdelibs-common.x86_64                        6:4.10.5-1.fc19           @updates
kdenetwork-common.noarch                     7:4.10.5-3.fc19           @updates
kdenetwork-kdnssd.x86_64                     7:4.10.5-3.fc19           @updates
kdenetwork-kget.x86_64                       7:4.10.5-3.fc19           @updates
kdenetwork-kget-libs.x86_64                  7:4.10.5-3.fc19           @updates
kdenetwork-krdc.x86_64                       7:4.10.5-3.fc19           @updates
kdenetwork-krdc-libs.x86_64                  7:4.10.5-3.fc19           @updates
kdenetwork-krfb.x86_64                       7:4.10.5-3.fc19           @updates
kdenetwork-krfb-libs.x86_64                  7:4.10.5-3.fc19           @updates
kdepim.x86_64                                7:4.10.5-1.fc19           @updates
kdepim-libs.x86_64                           7:4.10.5-1.fc19           @updates
kdepim-runtime.x86_64                        1:4.10.5-1.fc19           @updates
kdepim-runtime-libs.x86_64                   1:4.10.5-1.fc19           @updates
kdepimlibs.x86_64                            4.10.5-1.fc19             @updates
kdepimlibs-akonadi.x86_64                    4.10.5-1.fc19             @updates
kdepimlibs-kxmlrpcclient.x86_64              4.10.5-1.fc19             @updates
kdeplasma-addons.x86_64                      4.10.5-1.fc19             @updates
kdeplasma-addons-libs.x86_64                 4.10.5-1.fc19             @updates


thanks for your time!

The "Safely eject" option I mentioned will only be present for device in mass storage mode.
For PTP - that sounds like a Camera protocol, which could certainly be problematic...

"mass storage mode"? do you select that from KDE some where? the only modes the mobile device connects in are [ptp, mtp, lg software, charge only]. mass storage, i assume, must be some how selected in KDE's settings, some where? i didn't see any options like that in the device notifier widget's options, nor in dolphin's context menus. i'll look around some more. btw, i also have the device set to connect with "usb debuggin enabled", as i always have; but if i recall, the first few times i tried it, i disabled usb debugging, and it made no difference. i'll look around for that option / setting and see if i can find it some where in KDE...

thanks for your time!

okay, i realized 1 thing i never noticed before. after rooting my phone a while back and upgrading the android distro to 4.1.2 (i went from "jelly bean" to "ICS"), i never noticed that the "mass storage mode" option was not present in the newer version of android. however, this was not an issue on *buntu 13.04, and it still connected the same way.

i seen another thread that shed more details on the subject, on the pclinuxos forums, where a user stated "... Are you running ICS? I've unplugged and plugged the usb cable but no message ever appears. Therein lies the problem. This is a known issue with the MTP protocol and you have to do a workaround to get it to work. I've installed all of the required packages from Synaptic but it still is inaccessible. Apparently this is a Windows protocol which appeared in Honeycomb then became the default in ICS. I've Googled it and read several topics on the issue but virtually all relate to Ubuntu and don't seem to work with PCLOS".

i just now installed nautilus, and launched it with "nautilus --no-desktop", and disconnected the device and reconnected it, both in ptp and mtp mode, and nautilus appears to have the same problems that dolphin has. so, it would appear to me, for the moment, that this is NOT an KDE problem or a problem with dolphin, or a problem with my phone, but rather, a problem with fedora 19 not having certain necessary functionality, like kernel drivers, perhaps.

i've installed the "simple-mtpfs" package, as i've seen suggested in other forums - i'm not going to reboot just to test it, but, after my next reboot, if there is any difference, i'll update this thread. but as of now, i'm going to write this off as a fedora issue.

thanks so much for your time, and sorry for wasting it on a non-KDE problem!

Not a problem. I thought your phone had mass storage functionality sorry - that would have been an option on the phone had it been supported.
Issues with the MTP stacks of certain phones (such as Samsung devices) are known unfortunately.

i have confirmed this is an issue with the fedora distro. i installed debian (for the first time ever) and the behaviour is as would be expected - mount in MTP mode, and the device shows up on the left column, and when you right click you have the option to "eject" (sync) the device.

thanks for your help!