ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Oliver Grawert <ogra@xxxxxxxxxx>]

hi,
Am Samstag, den 30.01.2016, 12:20 +0100 schrieb Marcos Alonso:
> Hi to all.
> 
> Any of you know if it is feasible to connect to the PC through the USB
> cable using UMS (USB Mass Storage) instead of MTP (Media Transfer
> Protocol)?
> 
> I know MTP has some benefits in terms of safety but I jst connect to
> my PC and I' m tired of how bad MTP performs in Linux.
> 
UMS means you need to have your disk formatted with a filesystem the
connected PC knows (so if you want to be windows compatible you need to
use vfat or NTFS, if you want to be windows and mac compatible only vfat
is left). while it might work for devices with SD card to export the
card, it wouldnt work for directories in your home dir (vfat does for
example not support symlinks, so you couldnt just format the home
partition with it, many things would stop working then).

android used work around this by creating virtual sdcards that are vfat
formatted and (loop)mounted ... now that they switched to MTP nearly
everywhere they have to carry that hackish legacy forever (apps use the
sdcard path hardcoded for their data etc. to keep them running you need
to keep the mess around) at a high maintenance cost.

MTP should not be any slower than UMS though, they are both rather
hardware bound wrt. speed (i.e. as fast as the USB connection). if you
really expect issues with MTP here you can enable developer mode to use
adb push to compare the speed and actually file a bug about MTP if you
find they differ much.

assuming you have wifi where your PC is connected i'd suggest to take a
look at stuart langridges WifiTransfer from the app store (you need to
move the data around afterwards with the file manager though if you want
it in a common dir like "Music" or "Videos" but depending on your
network it is likely a lot faster than USB).

ciao
	oli