1178520 - USB Storage (MTP mode) requires Android "File Transfer" software to work on a Mac

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox OS Graveyard :: Gaia::System::Storage Mgmt, defect)

Description

[Potch [:potch]]

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Mobile; rv:41.0) Gecko/41.0 Firefox/41.0

I've enabled USB Storage in developer mode and even after restart device will not connect to my computer.

Comment 1

[Dave Hylands [:dhylands]]

Which device?

Which mode?

There are 2 USB Storage modes, UMS and MTP.

For the aries (Z3C), UMS mode is only supported on the external sdcard and MTP mode is supported for both the internal and external sdcard.

You can select the mode by press on the left hand side of the USB Storage setting (so press on the words "USB Storage"

Which host?

Windows and linux support MTP out of the box. The mac requires that you install and use https://www.android.com/intl/en_ca/filetransfer/ on your host.

Windows, Mac, and linux all support UMS.

Comment 2

[Dave Hylands [:dhylands]]

Oh yeah - if you change modes (from MTP to UMS or vice-versa) I think that it requires you to disable and re-enable USB Storage for it to take effect.

Comment 3

[Potch [:potch]]

Apologies for sparseness of information- I filed on the Foxfood phone, and was under the impression that information would be automatically included. 

Phone: Foxfood (z3c)
Build:  eng.worker.20150619.224059

Will try the setting change.

Comment 4

[Potch [:potch]]

Apparently I can't access the internal storage without that File transfer software :-/ Good to know.

Comment 5

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

[updating summary based on comment 4.]

[I recall hearing that this unfortunate state of affairs might be "expected" on Mac, since (per comment 1) mac doesn't have built-in MTP support]

Comment 6

[Dave Hylands [:dhylands]]

As the description now reads, yes this is a statement of fact.

We can't do anything about it, unless we're prepared to somehow modify OSX to support MTP (which as far as I can see would just requires something else to be installed other then Android File Transfer).

Comment 7

[Dave Hylands [:dhylands]]

Marking as WONTFIX since the only way to make MTP work on the Mac is to use Android File Transfer.

UMS works on the Mac, but UMS can only access partitions which are formatted as VFAT. On many phones, the internal sdcard shares its partition with /data and its formatted as ext2/3/4.

So the only way to access the internal storage on an aries (or nexus4/5) is to use MTP, and the only way to use MTP on the Mac is to use Android File Transfer.