[solved] Android phone only shows contents of external storage,

[Anonymous]

Hey All,

I’ve been using antiX for a few months as my daily driver & love it. I have one main issue & one minor one (to be posted elsewhere). My main issue is when I hook up my android via “Android Device USB Connect” (Menu > Applications > antiX > Android Device USB Connect), I can see both my internal & external storage folders, but can only see the contents of my external storage folder. When I open my internal storage folder of my phone, it appears blank. I’ve tried leaving the tab for the file window open for awhile to see if the contents eventually appear (I’ve noticed that occasionally my folders from my flash drives or external hard drives occasionally take a minute or two to appear). But when I leave the tab for the file window showing my folder for my phone’s internal storage open, all my tabs that I have open (downloads, videos, pictures, documents or whatever I may have open at the time, will freeze up. What are my next steps?

Thx Bunches, Renegade

• This topic was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by christophe. Reason: solved

[Member Xecure]

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Works fine for me (Android 7) on antiX with kernel 5.10. I can access and see both internal and microSD folders.
What Android version does your phone run? What kernel does your antiX system run?

• This reply was modified 1 year, 11 months ago by Xecure. Reason: typo

antiX Live system enthusiast.
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[Anonymous]

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@Xsecure,

My phone’s kernel is 4.9.117 & antiX kernel is 4.19….
I just tried to access the storage on my wife’s phone. Her make is the same as mine, accept hers is a Y6S & mine is just a Y6. The kernels are exactly the same, yet I can access her internal storage & see it’s contents.

Thx

[Member Xecure]

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Could you provide make/model of the phone and the Android version? Does it mount properly on other distros?
I have tested on Xiaomi with an SD card, running android 7, and no problem here (launched on both rox-filer and spacefm).
Maybe someone has a similar phone to yours and can give some more advice. I am no Android expert, but I can test of a different antiX kernel if you have the same Android version just to see if it could be related.
EDIT: Now I saw your edit. They are both very similar phones, and both should work if both have the same configuration.
See if you can change the transfer options when you connect the USB cable to the phone.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 11 months ago by Xecure.

antiX Live system enthusiast.
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[Anonymous]

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@Xsecure,

Thx, I appreciate your on this. Yes I have tried with several other distro, including MX19.3 Fluxbox, and had no problem seeing the contents of my internal storage. I have an older secondary laptop that I experiment with distro on. Once I noticed this problem on antiX, I made it a point to only use distro on it where I could access my phone’s internal storage. I had antiX on it as well & had the same problem. There were a couple lightweight distro that I had the same problem show up. But there were several lightweight distro such as lxde & Peppermint that had no such problem.
There was one distro, Artix, that started out without the problem, then later on it started having this problem. Yet later, I tried Artix Black OS, which is vertually the same OS with additional sources of pentesting & hacking programs. I had no problem with it.
My phone is a Huawei Y6, android 9, kernel 4.9. 117
Just saw your edit mentioning my edit. I’ll see what I can find out.

[Member Xecure]

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If both MX and antiX use the same kernel (assuming this is MX XFCE non-AHS), then the only difference is the file manager. I will ask one of my family members for a Android 9 phone to check it out on kernel 4.19, with both rox and spacefm. If this doesn’t work I will try a different File manager.

antiX Live system enthusiast.
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[Anonymous]

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@Xsecure,

Thank you again for your time & efforts on this, I’ll stand by for your next reply. In my time zone (+3, East Africa), it is nearing bed time in about an hour or two. My wife & I are early to bed, early to rise people. So it may be a bit before you hear from us. I’ve tried different ways to transfer files & have been looking for a possible setting or app that may be interfering with thie as well. So far I haven’t fou d anything.

[Member Xecure]

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Sorry for the delay. I finally got an Android 9 phone to test (though it uses kernel 4.4). I tested on antiX 19.4 with 4.19 kernel, and I can open the internal storage (a bit faster on rox than on spacefm) using the Android Device USB Connect application.
I have tested on both USB 2 and 3, and both work.

See if you can see the folder content in terminal
ls "$HOME/android_device/Shared Internal Storage"
Or whatever is the name for the “Internal Storage” folder

If ls can display (or “see”) the internal storage folders, then maybe a different file manager will display the contents correctly. If it cannot, I have no idea how to proceed forward.
ls and tree -d worked for me
tree -d "$HOME/android_device/"

antiX Live system enthusiast.
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[Member ModdIt]

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On an Android 9 Huawei/Honor device antix USB Device Connect will work for me, but only after setting “ask on usb connections” to “on”
in the developer options. I just use rox filer and icewm.

Without activating in dev options I only see the use Hi Suite exe crappy pop up.

To activate developer options you need to tap on build number in about phone/device multiple times until you get a you are now a
developer notice.

[Anonymous]

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@Moddit, my apologies for the late reply. I to the build number as you said & no matter how many times I tapped on it, I kept getting a message saying “you already are a developer”. I figure it must be on, as I see more than the “Hi Suite exe”. In addition to it I see my “internal storage” & “external storage” folders for my phone. I just can’t see what’s inside my “internal storage” folder. Where as, I can see, cut, past, & delete things inside my “external storage” folder. Occasionally I need to get inside my “internal storage” folder, & not being able to is the problem I’m looking for a solution to.

Thx Bunches

[Anonymous]

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@Xsecure

My apologies for the late reply, I was checking what happen if I tried using the other desktops/WMs. I got to “minimal-icewm & got a message saying that “it was an unsupported window or wm” or something like that. I couldn’t get out of it. Even restarting my computer would bring me right back to it. I tired to use the terminal to switch destops, but couldn’t get to the terminal, even with key bindings. So I had to re-install everything (it’s another story as to why I couldn’t use a snapshot. So all my free time has been used to reconfigure everything,which I’m still not done with. antiX is a bit different than what I’m used to, & even though I’ve figured this stuff out before, if I’ve only done things once, I don’t always remember what I’ve done before. Oh,& after I re-installed the OS, I went back to the minimal-icewm & tried it again & had no such message or any problem switching desktops that time.
Anyways, I finally got to a point yesterday where I could try what you said. I get getting a message saying that the directory couldn’t be found. On my set up, it takes my login name as my home directory, so I tried that with the same result. I also used a small “s” for storage where as you use a capital. I noticed that the “Internal storage” folder uses a capital “I” & small “s” respectively, so I tried that, to no avail. Once I finish getting everything configured on my operating system, I’ll play with it some more to what I’m doing wrong.
Again, thx for your time in this. I’m truly appreciative.
.

[Member Xecure]

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Anonymous wrote:

I noticed that the “Internal storage” folder uses a capital “I” & small “s” respectively, so I tried that, to no avail.

What is the output of
ANDROID_INTERNAL_DEVICE="$HOME/android_device/$(ls -1 $HOME/android_device/ | grep -i intern)"; echo "Internal Device name: $ANDROID_INTERNAL_DEVICE"; ls -lh "$ANDROID_INTERNAL_DEVICE"
This should be a more generic command to view all contents inside the Internal device. If the output is empty, then the terminal cannot read it either, and we would have to explore how other distros that you have tested to work with your Android device do it.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 11 months ago by Xecure. Reason: edit typo

antiX Live system enthusiast.
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[Anonymous]

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@Xsecure,

Before I saw your last reply, I had installed a different OS on my computer. Your reply to me were I introduced myself to the forum, about using a usb to surf the net, gave me another idea. I figured with a usb between & the net, my main system mattered less. So I went back to the OS before that worked perfectly, but still had a reasonably low memory footprint (temporarily). I’ve been working with LXLE on my main laptop, & Lubuntu on my secondary. I added Icewm & Enlightenment window mangers to both, cutting down the memory usage in both. I’ve also tried (not finished) working with Ubuntu net install. I surprised myself, and have something usable with Icewm. I haven’t worked out everything & am stumped on a few things, but it’s workable. So I’ve wondered if I started with the antiX net install, using Pcmanfm, maybe I’ll be able to solve the issue with my phone. I figure it’s a combination of some setting on my phone & something with antiX. My phone seems to do well with Pcmanfm & Thunar. Anyways, Thx again.

[Member ModdIt]

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RA Wrote: In addition to it I see my “internal storage” & “external storage” folders for my phone. I just can’t see what’s inside my “internal storage” folder. Where as, I can see, cut, past, & delete things inside my “external storage” folder

Sounds like either blocked on Phone by some security app or a problem with permissions on antiX after using the android device usb connect script..

[Anonymous]

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@Moddit & @Xsecure

Problem solved….. I assume there’s a way to tag this thread as solved, but can’t seem to find out how. I see a link that says “close tags” but when I click on it I don’t see anything that shows the thread is solved. Anyways, @Moddit, I had been thinking the same thing about it being a security setting or app on my phone. I looked through my apps & couldn’t see any settings that seemed might cause the problem, but found nothing. I even deleted some apps, but the problem continued. So finally, I did a factory reset on my phone, — problem solved. I replaced my apps one by one, setting them up the same way as they were previously, checking after each one to see if the same problem showed back up…. it hasn’t. I can now can now add & delete files as needed inside my internal storage on my phone. I have no idea what the cause of the original problem, or why antiX was the only distro where I was having the problem.

Thanks again for all your help.

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