How to explore Android device files under FreeBSD ?

[Manish Jain]

Hi Poly,


No matter how hard I try, no da0 turns up.


I found a couple of solutions, both Linux based :


1) Connect with USB and put your phone in PTM (Picture Tranfer) mode 
rather than the default MTP.

Now you can download the pictures.


2) Send the files over Bluetooth.


Thank you & Regards,
Manish Jain

On 2019-07-14 02:17, Polytropon wrote:
> On Sat, 13 Jul 2019 18:49:30 +0000, Manish Jain wrote:
>> Somebody has asked me for some images on my Android phone.
>>
>> So I first need to download those files from the phone to my FreeBSD box
>> and then email them.
>>
>>
>> Is there some way I can do that ?
> It is not intended by the manufacturer, that's why it's hard to do.
> It's of course not impossible, but the more you want, the less easy
> it becomes.
>
> Summary:
>
> By default, parts of the file system are usually accessible as USB
> direct storage device when connected to a computer. You you can
> mount them or take an image. Maybe there is some interaction on
> the phone required, maybe some setting you need to enable (like
> "Android developer something" nonsense), but your system should
> detect the attached device.
>
> For example, if /dev/da0 is the device detected (check "dmesg"
> output), you can do this:
>
> 	# mount -t msdosfs -o ro /dev/da0 /mnt
> 	...
> 	# umount /mnt
>
> Depending on how the partitioning is represented, instead of
> /dev/da0, /dev/da0s1 could be required. Check which files have
> been created in /dev.
>
> But as I said, this is only "part of the truth", i. e., only a
> subset of the file system can be accessed this way, compare it
> to a "chroot'ed environment". Depending on where the image files
> are actually located, you _could_ have access to them, or not.
>
> If you install the package android-tools-adb, you can use the adb
> command line program to access your phone. But this includes the
> limitation mentioned above. However, downloading stuff from the
> phone is very easy with this tool (I have tried this myself some
> years ago).
>
> Furthermore, some phones don't represent their content as USB
> mass storage, but they provide a MTP interface which is common
> for digital cameras. Tools like gphoto2 (CLI) and gtkam (GUI)
> can be used to get images and media from the phone (I also have
> tried this, works very good, even with iPad).
>
> The only way to deal with the "subtree restriction" mentioned
> above is to "root" the phone. This might lead to a loss of
> waranty of other problems I have no idea of. :-)
>
>
>
>> My Android phone does not have a USB port, but it does have a micro USB
>> port (which I use for
>> charging the phone).
> You should be able to use a USB-A<--->USB-micro-B cable to connect
> the phone to your computer. I'm quite sure this is not just for
> connecting power, but also for connecting data. :-)
>
>
>