Apparently a new USB stack (GitHub - sailfishos/usb-moded) could bring with it some cool new (old, if you ever used old Nokias etc.) features, like USB mode selection with direct cable link for file transfers (no more jumpdrive setup needed). Now the question is, how and when does that trickle down to Librem5 too…?
Usb_moded is a relatively simple daemon which tracks the usb cable connection status and activates a certain USB profile based on that. To do this it has a number of built in common profiles, an optional application launcher (app_sync) and configurable dynamic modes.
That could depend on your requirements. If you want to use Jumpdrive to image your disk then no software running on the phone is a safe alternative unless it can umount all the partitions of the disk that you want to image. Never mind if you need to restore your disk because you broke something.
I haven’t spent a lot of time playing with MTP but from memory it operates at a file level. So it is fine for file transfers but no good for imaging an entire disk.
Personally I do file transfer over WiFi (pick whatever application protocol you want, but I use SSH i.e. SFTP and more specifically sshfs) but I would like the Librem 5 to have MTP as well, mainly because that will better align with the expectations of people migrating from spyphones.
For me, the arrangement in the previous para is more convenient - don’t need to be in immediate proximity, and don’t need to fumble around with a cable.
Using USB may be more secure, if SSH is not set up properly. So that is another consideration.
mtp-tools is available for the L5 on Byzantium via apt. I haven’t installed it. I think it is all CLI. I for one hope that Purism doesn’t waste spend any resources on making GUI wrappers for it until reasonable overall phone functionality is in place and a not excessively old OS has been released.
I don’t know the scope of mtp-tools but it may be more complicated than that, for two reasons.
That package may only be the client side i.e. theoretically you can install that package and plug your USB media player into your Librem 5 and load content from the Librem 5 to the USB media player (primarily) - or you could plug your typical spyphone into your Librem 5 and transfer files between the Librem 5 and the spyphone.
That package may do nothing in respect of the USB interfaces exposed by the Librem 5 (again reflecting a client side bias), which is the point of the OP.
The topic of MTP (Librem 5 as server) has been discussed before in this forum and I think that it is already theoretically achievable - if you have the time and expertise.
I agree though that it is only “nice to have” and that there should be higher priorities.
Note that with the Librem 5 as MTP server, you don’t need GUI wrappers. The GUI runs on the host computer and, from memory, e.g. nautilus is happy to access the files (transparently as a type of remote / virtual file system).
Today i tried to get usb-ssh on my L5, as i lost ssh on Redpine due to new driver compilation, so i needed usb-ssh than usb-serial to debug.. but not worked and not sure what going on, as i didnt wanted to invest any more time in finding the cause. i just saying…
