MTP Services Mobian

[calinb]

Interesting umtprd is running and configured but something as amiss, still looking

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hmm must be in kernal space configuration not user space? ConfigFS... I will roll back to old version see how I broke it

You may not have been the person who broke umtp, echoplex! Perhaps you've discovered that the Mobian team de-featured it, which given the alpha security level of the system (pretty much warranting maintaining physical security of the PinePhone hardware at all times), I find to be very irritating:

https://gitlab.com/mobian1/issues/-/issues/232

I would like to figure out how to re-enable it too, but I have no experience with systemd. All of my experience was over a decade ago using SysV init and udev. It appears that Mobian starts umpt-responder.service with systemd. General reference here:

https://www.howtogeek.com/687970/how-to-...h-systemd/

However, before  I realized umtp had been de-featured, I had removed umtp-responder with apt autoremove so I had to apt install it. Now

Code:

sudo systemctl list-unit-files --type=service

reports that umtp-responder.service STATE and VENDOR_PRESET are enabled so I don't know where it was disable and why it is not working.

Have you made any progress?

Hi exhoplex,

maybe a little hint could be useful here...
Instead of fiddling around with system setup, you may try to start from 1215 Mobian Image and do apt update/upgrade.
Next make sure that your phone is not connected to any network (simply set airplane mode in the settings).

You then may connect to your host PC (i used WIN10 Notebook) and MTP should work all fine!

Regards,
scholbert

Airplane mode doesn't help on my current and up to date Mobian system (run from eMMC). However, MTP on the older Mobian on Megi's multiboot (SD card) still works! I'm trying to use it to determine what must be rolled back in my new Mobian system to gain MTP functionality again.

Maybe I'll ditch Mobian and start working on getting Gentoo working for me. It's been years (over a decade) since I ran Gentoo, but I loved it. Gentoo makes every user responsible for their own Linux system (and enables them to educate themselves and configure it however they choose). Of course the problem is bringing Gentoo up on the PinePhone is probably a herculean development effort (despite the Gentoo PinePhone work that's in progress). Nonetheless, it's probably easier than trying to re-spin other distros to function as desired!

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This might also be a clue, though I don't see how disabling umtp-responder must also disable USB networking. From the https://gitlab.com/mobian1/issues/-/issues/232 thread:

Arnaud Ferraris @a-wai ·  1 day ago
Owner
 

This should be re-added.

Yes, that's the whole point of this issue, but with a more secure implementation (including user authorization dialog).
The security mechanisms of umtp-responder are too weak atm, and there's currently no way to disable umtp-responder whithout also disabling USB networking, which is by far more important IMHO (and doesn't have a workaround like scp vs. MTP).