Another Way (Maybe) to Skin The MTP Cat

I knew there was a nexus between MTP and PTP but I hadn’t checked to see if I could use libgphoto2 to access my Samsung S3 before today. I decided to check because I saw the S3 listed among the devices supported by libgphoto2. Imagine that.

I’d already installed gtkam, which uses libgphoto2, to manage my old Kodak digital camera. I looked to see if the S3 was among the “cameras” listed in the camera selection dialog. It wasn’t listed there but several similar Samsung models were. I didn’t have anything to lose so I plugged it in. I then ran the “detect” option and, voila, I had a listing for my MTP device. I expanded the entry and I had access to everything on the device.

What gets me is that this (in #!/Jaunty) is the current version of gtkam and libgphoto2 2.4.2 (current is 2.4.6 and the S3 is named among supported devices in that version). Even with the current version of libmtp, I don’t have the ability to see things by directory (not shown but take my word for it: “Datacasts” and all  the other directories are listed above this “Music” directory) when using apps like rhythmbox. My only option is to use mtp-tools (aka “mtp-examples” to those of you still hitting my blog searching for Fedora help). The only options I have in rhythmbox are to view by artist, song, album, etc. Useful but limited. At least mtp-tools is adequate to manage the device.

I haven’t looked to see if there are any other apps using libgphoto2 to manage MTP devices or to allow mounting them via fuse. Speaking of fuse, the version of mtpfs in Jaunty’s repositories is of no use to me. I can mount the device but a command like ls results with question marks rather than file sizes and permissions. It also shows the filenames but doesn’t allow any other operation on them.

Anyway, it’s nice to see there might be another way to use MTP devices under non-Windows operating systems and that it may actually yield better results. Of course, I’ve only tried to read files and directories and delete files. It may be back to square one if I try to add files.

UPDATE: I installed gphotofs, a fuse system for libgphoto2 which allows PTP/MTP cameras to be mounted as any other filesystem. Yes! I can mount the device and have full access of it. Just deleted a bunch of podcasts from the Datacasts directory.

My shell, mksh, carries text beyond the screen (<) so you can’t see the rm command but you can see the result. Finally something freaking works right.

UPDATE 2: Add another 16MB (27MB when various {u} dependencies are removed) of cruft removed. Gone are rhythmbox, libmtp, libusb-dev (needed to recompile libmtp), mtp-tools, mtpfs, etc. It’s redundant to gphoto2/gphotofs and I have much better access to my device now.

UPDATE 3: Using gphotofs is very easy, especially if you’ve used fuse before. You need to be in group plugdev. I chose to create a mount point in my home directory (~/mtp) rather than use a point like /mnt. To mount, first make sure fuse is loaded (lsmod if it was built as a module) and then use the gphotofs command:

gphotofs ~/mtp

Or whatever your mount point is. Once mounted, you can navigate and issue commands as you would any other directory (in a terminal, file manager, whatever you want). When finished, unmount the point:

fusermount -u ~/mtp

Or whatever your mount point is. Give it a moment to umount and then you can remove your device. It’ll work for your camera (if the camera is MTP or PTP) as well.

UPDATE 4: Fuck. If it’s too good to be true, it probably is. I can read from the device and copy and delete from it. Copying to it:

cp: cannot create regular file... Function not implemented

So tomorrow I reinstall libmtp and mtp-tools. Yippee.

crunchbang jwmrc, ratpoison screenshot, terminals, etc.

I’ve tried three times to post the #! jwmrc but the XML tags render it unreadable. If anyone wants it, just leave a comment and I’ll e-mail it or post it at a forum or something. I’m not using jwm much right now but I have the full #! menu jwm-ized sans the keybindings. I didn’t bother doing the keybindings after all, or change the colors much, because those are all personal preferences.

I really like the way I have this thing configured right now in ratpoison, with the exceptions of Skype and gimp. Not much I can do about that short of filing bug reports for each: “doesn’t open in single window mode.”

What’s this? I see conky plus trayer across the top, screen opened in the emacs terminal instance with my .ratpoisonrc.

I set the wallpaper (12kb with intentionally crappy gradients) using nitrogen to see how bad it would look under terminator and if I could still read my stuff in screen. I’m back to using terminator at least for the time being; font rendering in the version of aterm, especially under screen, I downloaded is fucking hideous so that’s another thing to recompile at some point. I usually use a solid background but I noticed when I set aterm to transparent and had an image for the background that the colors were totally distorted, as if I had the wrong resolution set or something. So now my .Xdefaults has transparency off for aterm. One of the things I really fucking hate about terminator — other than being wrapped in python — is that certain combinations of keystrokes are used to control opening and splitting “tabbed” terminals. I’ve tried tabbed terminals before and don’t understand the need for them when you have better tools like screen available.

Invisible: mocp, conkeror, various files and modes in emacs.

That’s it for now. Time to hit the gym.

Separation of Church and Software

Warning: If you’re easily offended, don’t bother reading below this paragraph.

I saw in my distrowatch feed that Ubuntu Christian Edition has a new release. Last I’d heard — and I openly admit I haven’t paid close attention — the project was dead. So it’s kind of like Lazarus rising from the dead.

After seeing the screenshots, I can see that my blog is likely unreachable by people using UCE because of my profanities. Fuck. That’s reason enough for me to recommend others stay the hell away from UCE!

My bad words no doubt trigger such filters, but I bet embedded video of or even links to Fox News Channel hotties (un)crossing their legs and showing panties won’t. Don’t whine to me about the link. Would you want O’Reilly over that? I’m only making a point about the ineffectiveness of filtering software and how relative things — some of the content on “safe” sites (the above link is pretty tame compared to what else I could’ve linked) can be more offensive to some people than a few bad words– are.

I’m not against parents taking steps to protect their kids from things they shouldn’t hear or see (we do that, too). I think the effectiveness of filtering software is very debatable and not a replacement for supervision. To make it a central part of a “remix” or operating system under any guise is a bit flimsy. Ultimately it restricts the user(s) from desired data. The famous example of blocked searches for breast cancer because of the word breast is the tip of the iceberg. And, ultimately, it can be defeated by using more clever search terms.

Filtering software is no match for a fourteen year-old boy’s impulses no matter how devout he and his family are. He will find the content he wants whether it’s sexually arousing or instructive in the manufacture of small explosives. A filter is but a speed bump, a minor obstacle.

How does use of such software make anything Christian or Muslim or Jewish or even Satanic? It just makes life a bit restrictive and cumbersome. That’s all.

I’m also not against people believing whatever they want. I think there’s a disservice to humanity when people join together over axioms, things they can’t prove or measure, particularly when those axioms have been used throughout history as reasons to separate humanity (which seems anti-thetical to Ubuntu’s raison d’être, which is a wider and more humanist view of the world) through war and oppression. Jihad is crusade is jihad. It doesn’t really matter which religion is being pushed if it’s at the end of a blade or the barrel of a gun. You can’t separate the good from the bad in history; it’s patently dishonest to brush aside inconvenient parts of the story to paint only a rosy picture. With every religion comes fundamentalism, and with fundamentalism comes crimes against humanity – it’s historically inseparable whether the religion is Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, or anything else.

One more thing about history. The ugly brown wallpaper shown in the UCE screenshots I saw had a common (mis)representation of Jesus. Such art, whether painting or statue, makes Jesus to be WASPy, much the goyim. For its Son of God series, the BBC commissioned an artist to come up with a more historically and culturally accurate portrait. Somehow, even if there were no copyright issues I don’t think the UCE people would use such a representation. Even if they’ve never seen him to know the difference.

I don’t know how many people use religious-oriented versions of any operating system. I don’t know if the people drawn to things like UCE or Islamic remixes are up to no good. I presume most of them are devout and sincere, fine and upstanding members of the wider community of man. Hopefully these things aren’t being used to further divide people, beguiling the weak and impressionable with promises of another, better world if only they make this one hell for any who oppose them.

I’d like to think that with technology and the Internet the world is growing closer together rather than further apart. Just as science and technology have dispelled many myths and legends, science and technology can do what most religions have promised but none has delivered: a better world for all people, in the here and now.