Mounting Android's File System

[Bernie Hoefer]

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On 2026-09-20 01:18 UTC-05:00, John Scott wrote:
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> Ahoy there, Bernie!
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Thanks for responding to my request for help, John.


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>> IF I COPY (OR RSYNC) A FILE FROM THE LAPTOP TO THE DEVICE, THE
>> TIMESTAMPS ARE NOT KEPT
> 
> CAN YOU TALK LOUDER? I DON'T HAVE MY GLASSES ON!!!11
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Sorry.  I wanted to differentiate my normal conversational text from the text where I explain what I'm doing on the command line.


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> This is a known defect in Android that no one has gotten around to
> fixing; the MTP protocol is capable:
> https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/36974569
> It is what it is 🤷
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Wow, that bug 36974569 is from June 2013!  I see that it was closed as "Won't Fix (Obsolete)" -- meaning the bug was open for too long with no attention from the Android team.  A new bug 37017254 was opened in 2015 but closed "Won't Fix (Obsolete)" in 2020 stating, "our product team has shifted work priority that doesn't include this issue."

Going through the bugs' comments, I did see the suggestion to 'tar' up any files and transfer the tarball over to the Android device.  Dates & times are preserved when untar'ed on it.  (Not that that suggestion is a perfect solution for me, but it is one I had not considered.


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>> Some co-workers have suggested network-using alternatives (many of
>> them non-FOSS): KDEconnect.kde.org
> 
> Based on the manner you stylized this, I take it you probably don't
> understand what KDE Connect really is.
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You are right; I am totally ignorant of KDE Connect.  I will take some time to learn about it.


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>> $ mount | grep mnt
>> jmtpfs on ~/mnt type fuse.jmtpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=XXXXX,group_id=XXXXX)
> 
> Just as a fun fact, the "device" isn't quite mounted to your computer
> in the conventional sense. Here, MTP is basically an FTP, NFS, or
> WebDAV-like protocol over USB that's an abstraction layer above the
> filesystem.
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Thanks again for the info, John.  I sort-of knew some of that but your explanation helped crystalize it.

Thanks also for the Bluetooth suggestion, but if I'm going to do that, I might as well use the wireless capability of the device and transfer the files over the network.


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> • Another technical option I mention for the sake of completeness is
>   using adb, the Android debugging agent, which allows a lot of
>   advanced communication between a PC and an Android device.
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I was not aware of it including file transfers.  I will also look into this.


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> P.S. You should probably remove this from your email signature:
> 
>> PGP e-mail is welcome!  Get my 1024 bit public key from:
>> https://www.TheMoreIKnow.info/hoeferbe/0x1EA6025D9DFB224E69D4CE0E7241A6A9446A6F93.key
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Ah, now that is a whole other conversation!  I do not disagree with you about the age of my key, but my story is a bit more complex.  Maybe we can talk about it after the next CINLUG meeting.  :-)


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> I hope you don't take these criticisms personally. As you may be able
> to tell, this is a problem space I'm very familiar with.
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Not at all!  But it a discussion I'd rather have offline.  Thanks for caring enough to say something.


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