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There is the question Where are MTP mounted devices located in the filesystem? and its answers specify (as I expected and seen in other systems) /run/user/$USER/gvfs as the real mount point for my device which otherwise is showed at mtp:/My Phone/Internal shared storage/.

(I can access the phone without problems, but I would like to know the mount point because accessing the phone that way this problem HERE might be solved and because from past experience it allows more options for files in file manager right-click context menu.)

Installing gvfs-fuse,the folder /run/user/1000/gvfs/ is empty.

Where is the phone mounted then?

cipricus
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  • In a snap perhaps? :) what about ~$USER/.gvfs? http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/xenial/man1/gvfsd-fuse.1.html says $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/gvfs or $HOME/.gvfs. – Rinzwind May 18 '21 at 11:05
  • @Rinzwind - there is no $HOME/.gvfs. And before installing gvfs-fuse today for the purposes of this and the linked questions there wasn't even a /run/user/1000/gvfs/ folder on the system - while the phone was accessed as expected at mtp:/. Is it possible that the mountpoint here has nothing to do with gvfs? – cipricus May 18 '21 at 11:14
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    I think your phone is not mounted at all but is accessed via the MTP-protocol. – mook765 May 18 '21 at 12:07
  • @mook765 - I have just found and added a Reddit post (I don't know how authoritative) saying that it is not mounted: but being accessed via MTP is not enough for it not to be mounted (on other systems it is MTP-accessed and still mounted at /run/user/1000/gvfs/) , the reason seems to be that "a separate KIO process" is at work. (Whatever these are.) – cipricus May 18 '21 at 12:10
  • @Rinzwind - please see my update, namely the Reddit/kde post saying Dolphin doesn't mount locations, it accesses them via separate KIO processes. This avoids blocking UI applications. But can one still mount a folder of the Android phone if one pleases? – cipricus May 18 '21 at 12:18
  • This avoids blocking UI applications ironically is true. nautilus still blocks completely if mtp starves, but luckily the rest of the UI continues to work, so you can do killall -9 nautilus. AFAICS KDE was forced to move mtp out of the filesystem when Ubuntu implemented the Windows 98 bug called "autostart", which made the X Window Panels bork on starved mtp operations. (AFAICS in 2025 Ubuntu will have implemented all bugs of Windows ME, then they will start to implement all bugs of Windows XP. Note that I hate Windows for all of its bugs being reimplemented into Ubuntu!) – Tino Jun 19 '21 at 09:45
  • @Tino - I have never suffered from those bugs myself, I'm much more troubled that by double clicking a +3GB video on the Android device it starts being copied to the computer instead of being played -- and letting me see quickly what's what. Oddly, when the copying to cache takes place, Dolphin displays the transfer as a normal one. But when I copy the file manually Dolphin notifications reports it finished instantly (when it takes place in background). The logical action should anyway be different: not to copy again the file from source, but to move it from cache. – cipricus Jun 19 '21 at 11:45
  • @Rinzwind - what about How to access/mount Android drive in Plasma with other file manager than Dolphin?. – cipricus Jun 19 '21 at 13:09

1 Answers1

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Under the Reddit/KDE post MTP mount location for Android phones under Plasma:

Dolphin doesn't mount locations, it accesses them via separate KIO processes. This avoids blocking UI applications. I haven't checked if simple-mtpfs uses FUSE to mount MTP, but if it does, it is indeed the solution you are looking for.

According to https://github.com/phatina/simple-mtpfs:

SIMPLE-MTPFS (Simple Media Transfer Protocol FileSystem) is a file system for Linux (and other operating systems with a FUSE implementation, such as Mac OS X or FreeBSD) capable of operating on files on MTP devices attached via USB to local machine. On the local computer where the SIMPLE-MTPFS is mounted, the implementation makes use of the FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) kernel module. The practical effect of this is that the end user can seamlessly interact with MTP device files."*

I have posted as an answer what initially was posted as an update: the fact that there is no mountpoint because there is no mount procedure when accessing Android drive in Plasma. Not all "locations" are accessed in this way, external drives are mounted as expected, but Android locations are accessed in this particular way.

A big consequence is that other file managers cannot access an Android location as Dolphin does or as they do in other desktop environments.

Some other odd behavior can be noticed:

  • When opening a file from the Android drive (accessed through Dolphin) the file is copied to the local drive (that is to ~/.cache/kioexec/krun/) before being opened.

  • If - after waiting for the copy to ~./cache to finish and for the opening of the file - one decides to copy the file manually to the computer, even if that is done on the $HOME partition (that is the same partition as that of the automatic copy-to-cache), instead of just moving that file from ~/.cache/kioexec/krun/ to the paste location, it is copied for a second time from the Android drive.

  • While during the automatic copying to cache Dolphin shows normally the transfer progress in notifications, during manual copy/paste there is no notification progress shown, as if the transfer was instantaneous. (One would expect that to be the case if the paste was on the same partition as the ~/.cache location, and thus a simple move action from there was to be made; but no: the copying is done again from Android, only without notification).

The android drive is thus not mounted automatically, but it can be mounted manually, for example as said said HERE.

cipricus
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