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The N900 is now 15 years old! (9)
to Nokia N900 by Arno_11 - 1 hr, 57 mins ago -
Sailfish OS for the Motorola Moto G7 Power (XT1955-5) - (ocean) (4)
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2010-01-13
, 08:41
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Posts: 134 |
Thanked: 91 times |
Joined on Nov 2009
@ Imperial College London
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#52
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Originally Posted by titan
It works for me! Might be worth trying again. I can save to and open from /home at will. Perhaps you originally tried a "normal" mount, without bind? I guess that could fail.
it doesn't work. that was one of the first things I tried on my N900 when I found out about
the stupid MyDocs constraint.
Soeiro, I agree that more features would be nice, but this has solved the only huge inconvenience for me. Next on the list would be to show the full extension, but that's probably going to take a bit more time to sort out.
Cheers,
Jan
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2010-01-13
, 08:52
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Posts: 946 |
Thanked: 1,650 times |
Joined on Oct 2009
@ Germany
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#53
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really? that would be great!
What I tried was to bind-mount DCIM and .sounds etc to directories in /home/user.
I could open media files if the media player was called from the GPE file manager
but not from the media player itself. The camera app did not work at all.
What I tried was to bind-mount DCIM and .sounds etc to directories in /home/user.
I could open media files if the media player was called from the GPE file manager
but not from the media player itself. The camera app did not work at all.
Originally Posted by Big Phat Jan
It works for me! Might be worth trying again. I can save to and open from /home at will. Perhaps you originally tried a "normal" mount, without bind? I guess that could fail.
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2010-01-13
, 21:37
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Posts: 134 |
Thanked: 91 times |
Joined on Nov 2009
@ Imperial College London
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#54
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Originally Posted by titan
I hadn't looked at the DCIM folder, but that (half) works for me as well. The camera app seems happy enough storing pictures on ext3, but the Photos app doesn't seem happy indexing them (at least it doesn't do so immediately).
really? that would be great!
What I tried was to bind-mount DCIM and .sounds etc t
o directories in /home/user.
I could open media files if the media player was called from the GPE file manager
but not from the media player itself. The camera app did not work at all.
I suppose the next thing is to try bind mounting /home/user/ext3MyDocs or something to /home/user/MyDocs and see what happens...
Cheers,
Jan
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2010-01-13
, 22:27
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Posts: 134 |
Thanked: 91 times |
Joined on Nov 2009
@ Imperial College London
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#55
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Originally Posted by Big Phat Jan
OK, I think this should be solved by modifying /home/user/.config/tracker/tracker.cfg to add the new folders to WatchDirectoryRoots. Haven't tried yet though. Will report again when I do.
I hadn't looked at the DCIM folder, but that (half) works for me as well. The camera app seems happy enough storing pictures on ext3, but the Photos app doesn't seem happy indexing them (at least it doesn't do so immediately).
Cheers,
Jan
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2010-01-14
, 15:54
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Posts: 134 |
Thanked: 91 times |
Joined on Nov 2009
@ Imperial College London
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#56
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Originally Posted by Big Phat Jan
I seem to be in a conversation with myself!
OK, I think this should be solved by modifying /home/user/.config/tracker/tracker.cfg to add the new folders to WatchDirectoryRoots. Haven't tried yet though. Will report again when I do.
Cheers,
Jan
Well in case anyone is interested, I've now got this running almost as I want it. Here are some observations.
Most important observation: Strange and interesting things can occur if you mess with things that seem designed not to be messed with (as below). As this is only worth doing if you've repartitioned the eMMC I'm assuming that you're well prepared for whatever may befall you!
If you have media stored outside of the standard places it won't be seen by some Nokia applications, including Photos and Media player. This is easily fixed by editing /home/user/.config/tracker/tracker.cfg and adding the directories to WatchDirectoryRoots. You may need to reset your tracker processes using:
Code:
tracker-processes -r
The locations shown for the hard-coded Documents, Music, Pictures, Videos and Camera folders in hildon-fm are stored in /home/user/.config/user-dirs.dirs. I got slightly odd behaviour when I tried changing these directly to directories on ext3, and changing the camera directory to a directory on ext3 seems to not work at all.
I think the easiest way of explaining what I did is to just give the commands. So here they are:
Code:
cd /user/home mkdir ext3MyDocs mkdir MyDocs/mnt #move the current contents of the "special" folders in MyDocs to ext3. Need to be root for most of the following. sudo gainroot mv MyDocs/.documents ext3MyDocs mv MyDocs/.sounds ext3MyDocs mv MyDocs/.images ext3MyDocs mv MyDocs/.videos ext3MyDocs mv MyDocs/DCIM ext3MyDocs #bind mount the ext3 location to a directory in MyDocs - n.b. you can't do this directly to MyDocs because that would unmount the vfat partition first. mount --bind ext3MyDocs MyDocs/mnt #Change the locations that hildon-fm looks for these "special" folders - edit .config/user-dirs.dirs and change $HOME/MyDocs/.documents to $HOME/MyDocs/mnt/.documents etc. #make a bind mount to /home from within MyDocs to enable saving to and opening from the ext3 partition from the file manager: mkdir MyDocs/filesystem mount --bind /home MyDocs/filesystem #Edit /home/user/.config/tracker/tracker.cfg to point to the ext3MyDocs directory instead of MyDocs for WatchDirectoryRoots.
To make the mounts last after reboots, and the mount --bind instructions to /etc/event.d/rcS-late, just before the line that says "#We can safely continue booting now".
I don't think I will ever use my device in mass storage mode, but this will almost certainly break that, because you won't be able to umount MyDocs unless you first umount the bound directories. I'm sure that could be fiddled with, but I'm not going to do it!
I'm sure this is clear as mud, so if you'd like any further clarification just ask.
Cheers,
Jan
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2010-01-14
, 16:35
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Posts: 946 |
Thanked: 1,650 times |
Joined on Oct 2009
@ Germany
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#57
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Originally Posted by Big Phat Jan
may I join you
I seem to be in a conversation with myself!
Well in case anyone is interested, I've now got this running almost as I want it. Here are some observations.
Can you confirm that you could not find any other way to get it working,
except for the VFAT MyDocs mount?
In that case we could implement the following solution for people
who want to keep a USB exported VFAT partition:
* create a minimal VFAT loopback file and mount it under MyDocs
* create a hidden (VFAT) directory in MyDocs, e.g. MyDocs/_home
* bind mount ~/ to MyDocs/_home
and fix .config/user-dirs.dirs accordingly
(would be nice if MyDocs/_home/Documents instead of .documents works)
* mount the real VFAT partition or image somewhere else,
e.g., /home/extern
* in ~/.documents/ (or Documents/) create a symlink to the external folder
ln -s /home/extern/Documents/ ~/.documents/extern
and the same for the other media folders.
This way one can work with the ext3 folder and also include
the external files if the external VFAT is mounted.
If symlinks don't work use bind mounts and fix the mounting scripts to bind/unbind the directories for USB mass storage mode.
I hope that it will work.
It's a ugly workaround for the bogus VFAT requirement in the Nokia apps
but it's much closer to what I want.
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2010-01-14
, 17:29
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Posts: 134 |
Thanked: 91 times |
Joined on Nov 2009
@ Imperial College London
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#58
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Originally Posted by titan
Of course!
may I join you
thank you! that sounds very promising. I'll have to try it myself.
Can you confirm that you could not find any other way to get it working,
except for the VFAT MyDocs mount?
Even should this work, if you change MYDOCSDIR to a non-VFAT partition you don't even get as far as being able to choose documents - the "Jan's Nokia N900" link disappears.
I think that the Camera is not going to be happy storing images to anything but a VFAT partition (though it seems it can be "tricked" using the bind mount). Changing NOKIA_CAMERA_DIR in .config/user-dirs.dirs to /home/user/DCIM did not work, even after chown-ing it to user:root and chmod-ing to 777.
In that case we could implement the following solution for people
who want to keep a USB exported VFAT partition:
* create a minimal VFAT loopback file and mount it under MyDocs
* create a hidden (VFAT) directory in MyDocs, e.g. MyDocs/_home
* bind mount ~/ to MyDocs/_home
and fix .config/user-dirs.dirs accordingly
(would be nice if MyDocs/_home/Documents instead of .documents works)
* mount the real VFAT partition or image somewhere else,
e.g., /home/extern
* in ~/.documents/ (or Documents/) create a symlink to the external folder
ln -s /home/extern/Documents/ ~/.documents/extern
and the same for the other media folders.
This way one can work with the ext3 folder and also include
the external files if the external VFAT is mounted.
If symlinks don't work use bind mounts and fix the mounting scripts to bind/unbind the directories for USB mass storage mode.
I hope that it will work.
It's a ugly workaround for the bogus VFAT requirement in the Nokia apps
but it's much closer to what I want.
I guess that your other plans would work too, though perhaps if you add a "filesystem" bind mount within your MyDocs you wouldn't need to do any linking, or direct mounting to /home/extern, as this would already be pretty accessible when mounted.
I think the best long-term plan is going to be to modify hildon-fm to just show us the whole filesystem! Then the only remaining issue would be the seeming unwillingness of the Camera to save files except via a VFAT partition.
Cheers,
Jan
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2010-01-15
, 01:02
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Posts: 134 |
Thanked: 91 times |
Joined on Nov 2009
@ Imperial College London
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#59
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Bad news.
It turns out that perhaps Nokia had good reason for forcing the Camera to only write to a VFAT partition. I don't know why, but if you "trick" the camera to save to the ext3 partition using the methods above, the resulting picture has a strange "cloudy" effect.
This effect (which completely ruins the photo) disappears when switching the camera dir back to a directory which is physically on the VFAT partition. This effect does not occur when the picture is on the VFAT transiently and then copied to the ext3 partition.
I have no idea what is causing this, but I'll have a fiddle and see what happens. I guess a possible solution here would be to monitor the DCIM directory on VFAT, and immediately move any new files to the ext3 partition. More faff!
Cheers,
Jan
It turns out that perhaps Nokia had good reason for forcing the Camera to only write to a VFAT partition. I don't know why, but if you "trick" the camera to save to the ext3 partition using the methods above, the resulting picture has a strange "cloudy" effect.
This effect (which completely ruins the photo) disappears when switching the camera dir back to a directory which is physically on the VFAT partition. This effect does not occur when the picture is on the VFAT transiently and then copied to the ext3 partition.
I have no idea what is causing this, but I'll have a fiddle and see what happens. I guess a possible solution here would be to monitor the DCIM directory on VFAT, and immediately move any new files to the ext3 partition. More faff!
Cheers,
Jan
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2010-01-18
, 04:22
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Posts: 207 |
Thanked: 119 times |
Joined on Nov 2009
@ Pittsburgh, PA, USA
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#60
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I resolve CAMERA's problem!!!!
Now my camera can took pictures on ext3 and vfat!!!!
I resolved it by modification ke-recv (I will try too put patch somewhere...).
But camera has bug too.....
Bug is:
When camera start it is checking on presence folder DCIM on target partition. If it doesn't exist camera create folder DCIM. Here is a bug!
DCIM created with root:root (group and user) but should be user:users.
Like way around (until nokia will fix it) could be change owner:group by command:
chown -R user:users DCIM
chmod -R 664 DCIM
After this camera make picture on ext3 partition!!!
Quality of pictures absolutely same!
full script for this:
1. Turn on Camera
2. Change Location for saving picture on internal memory
3. Make picture. Camera will be closed with error message.
4. in terminal type:
chown -R user:users DCIM
chmod -R 664 DCIM
After this camera will work.
Now my camera can took pictures on ext3 and vfat!!!!
I resolved it by modification ke-recv (I will try too put patch somewhere...).
But camera has bug too.....
Bug is:
When camera start it is checking on presence folder DCIM on target partition. If it doesn't exist camera create folder DCIM. Here is a bug!
DCIM created with root:root (group and user) but should be user:users.
Like way around (until nokia will fix it) could be change owner:group by command:
chown -R user:users DCIM
chmod -R 664 DCIM
After this camera make picture on ext3 partition!!!
Quality of pictures absolutely same!
full script for this:
1. Turn on Camera
2. Change Location for saving picture on internal memory
3. Make picture. Camera will be closed with error message.
4. in terminal type:
chown -R user:users DCIM
chmod -R 664 DCIM
After this camera will work.
NTFS is common filesystem read by every OS.
In fact, the Linux kernel does only provide read support (limited write support)
and you would need FUSE for full access.
With loopback files the user can exported any filesystem she wants.