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cipricus
Asked: 2021-03-23 22:29:26 +0800 CST

Mount Android media folder in Kubuntu instead of using the Dolphin/KDE KIO process (open file directly instead of copying to cache)

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I want to open some videos located on an Android phone before saving them on local drive or any other location.

I can do that in Xfce. But on Plasma, when I want to open the video, Dolphin starts copying it in cache, that is on local drive, namely ~/.cache/kioexec/krun/.

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If I wanted that file on drive before opening it, I would have copied it myself. But I want to save time and space and open the file directly. (That may be very useful if I want to process/transcode a large file: instead of copying on the local drive, one could set the phone location as the transcoder source and the external drive as the target.)

Can I do that on Plasma, given that is normal in Xfce and other desktops?

Installing gvfs-fuse in Kubuntu 20.04: the folder /run/user/1000/gvfs/ is empty.

The (expected) mountpoint /run/user/1000/gvfs/ is not the one in Kubuntu 20.04, and it seems that Dolphin doesn't mount locations, it accesses them via separate KIO processes, as said here.

This is in Kubuntu 20.04, Plasma 5.18.5.

In Mint Xfce the option to open the Android phone files in any application (not just the default, which was anyway available without any cache-copy) was absent in file manager context menu when the files where accessed through the mtp:/ path, but were available through the mount path /run/user/1000/gvfs/. (In Dolphin all programs are accessible from context menu in mtp:/ but they trigger a copy-to-cache process.)

(As pointed out by a commentator, there is also a bug where ~/.cache/kioexec/krun/ is not cleaned and a lot of GB may be hidden there. 20.04 seems affected by this, but the problem seems unrelated to this question).

android

2 Answers

  1. Sorry, but I have too few points to leave this as a comment. The problem is that software can't use KDEs KIO layer to acces network fs. I do not know what distro you are using, but the package kio-fuse should solve your issue.

    You could also install cifs-utils, create a mount-point (e.g. /mnt/movies), open the folder with dolphin, and play videos through vlc or whatever your media-player of choice might be.

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  2. Best Answer

    Based on this answer recommending go-mtpfs to mount the phone location:

    It is extremely simple, the idea is to run go-mtpfs /media/MyAndroid (no PPA needed anymore). I had tried this in the past without success, as I couldn't mount the Android drive on /media.

    Instead it can be mounted in $HOME.

    So, after creating ~/MyAndroid, in order to mount the Android drive, do:

    go-mtpfs MyAndroid.

    Don't forget to unmount with

    fusermount -u MyAndroid

    --- otherwise simply closing the terminal would make that folder inaccessible.

    Launchers can be created for the two commands:

    kate ~/.local/share/applications/mount-phone.desktop:

    [Desktop Entry]
Exec=go-mtpfs MyAndroid
Icon=phone
Name=Mount phone
NoDisplay=false
StartupNotify=false
Type=Application

    kate ~/.local/share/applications/unmount-phone.desktop:

    [Desktop Entry]
Exec=fusermount -u MyAndroid
Icon=phone
Name=Unmount phone
NoDisplay=false
StartupNotify=false
Type=Application
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