README

Building and Installing
-----------------------

See the "INSTALL" file.


Heritage
--------

libmtp is based on several ancestors:

* libptp2 by Mariusz Woloszyn was the starting point used
  by Richard A. Low for the initial starter port. You can
  find it at http://libptp.sourceforge.net/

* libgphoto2 by Mariusz Woloszyn and Marcus Meissner was
  used at a later stage since it was (is) more actively
  maintained. libmtp tracks the PTP implementation in
  libgphoto2 and considers it an upstream project. We will
  try to submit anything generally useful back to libgphoto2
  and not make double efforts. In practice this means we
  use ptp.c, ptp.h and ptp-pack.c verbatim from the libgphoto2
  source code. If you need to change things in these files,
  make sure it is so general that libgphoto2 will want to
  merge it to their codebase too. You find libgphoto2 as part
  of gPhoto: http://gphoto.sourceforge.net/

* libnjb was a project that Richard and Linus were working
  on before libmtp. When Linus took Richards initial port
  and made an generic C API he re-used the philosophy and
  much code from libnjb. Many of the sample programs are for
  example taken quite literally from libnjb. You find it here:
  http://libnjb.sourceforge.net/


Compiling programs for libmtp
-----------------------------

libmtp has support for the pkg-config script by adding a libmtp.pc
entry in $(prefix)/lib/pkgconfig. To compile a libmtp program,
"just" write:

gcc -o foo `pkg-config --cflags --libs libmtp` foo.c

This also simplifies compilation using autoconf and pkg-config: just
write e.g.

PKG_CHECK_MODULES(MTP, libmtp)
AC_SUBST(MTP_CFLAGS)
AC_SUBST(MTP_LIBS)

To have libmtp LIBS and CFLAGS defined. Needless to say, this will
only work if you have pkgconfig installed on your system, but most
people have nowadays.

If your library is installed in e.g. /usr/local you may have to tell
this to pkgconfig by setting the PKG_CONFIG_PATH thus:

export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig


Documentation
-------------

Read the API documentation that can be generated with doxygen.
It will be output in doc/html if you have Doxygen properly
installed. (It will not be created unless you have Doxygen!)

For information about the Media Transfer Protocol, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Transfer_Protocol


Contributing
------------

See the project page at http://libmtp.sourceforge.net/
We always need your help. There is a mailinglist and a
bug report system there.


New Devices
-----------

If you happen upon a device which libmtp claims it cannot
autodetect, please submit the vendor ID and device ID 
as a bug, patch or feature request on the Sourceforge
bug tracker at our homepage. If it gives a sensible 
output from "mtp-detect" then please attach the result as
well as it teach us some stuff about your device. If you've
done some additional hacking, join our mailinglist and
post your experiences there.

If you want to be able to hack some more and you're not
afraid of C hacking, add an entry for your device's 
vendor/product ID and a descriptive string to the database 
in the file src/libusb-glue.c. It is close to the top of the 
file.

If you want to poke around to see if your device has some
special pecularities, you can test some special device
flags (defined in src/libusb-glue.h) by inserting them
together with your device entry in src/libusb-glue.c.
Flags can be tested in isolation or catenated with "|"
(binary OR). If relatives to your device use a certain
flag, chances are high that a new device will need it
too, typically from the same manufacturer.

The most common flag that needs to be set is the 
DEVICE_FLAG_UNLOAD_DRIVER that detach any Linux kernel
drivers that may have attached to the device making
MTP access impossible. This is however not expected to
really work: this is a problem being tracked as of
now (2007-08-04). See the "last resort" solutions below
if you really need to get your dual-mode device to work 
with MTP.

If your device is very problematic we are curious of how it
works under Windows, so we enjoy reading USB packet sniffs
that reveal the low-level traffic carried out between
Windows Media Player and your device. This can be done 
using the trial version of HHD Softwares software-only
USB monitor. You need to get a copy of version 2.37 since
the newer trial versions won't let you carry out the 
needed packet sniffs. (As of 2007-03-10 a copy can be found
at: http://www.cobbleware.com/files/usb-monitor-237.exe)
There are other USB monitors as well, some more expensive
alternatives use hardware and even measure electronic
characteristics of the traffic (which is far too much 
detail for us).

If you are a device vendor, please consider assigning one 
of your employees as a contact person for libmtp, have them
sign up to the libmtp development list and answer questions
and post new device ID:s as they are released to our
mailing list. By the way: do you have spare devices you
can give us? Send them to Richard (Mac support) or Linus
(Linux support). (So far nobody did that except for Microsoft
who sent us a Zune by proxy!)


Devices does not work - last resort:
------------------------------------

Some devices that are dual-mode are simply impossible to get
to work under Linux because the usb-storage(.ko) kernel
module hook them first, and refuse to release them, even
when we specify the DEVICE_FLAG_UNLOAD_DRIVER flag. (Maybe
it DOES release it but the device will immediately be probed
at the USB mass storage interface AGAIN because it 
enumerates.)

Try this, if you have a recent 2.6.x Linux kernel:

* Edit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

* Add the line "blacklist usb-storage"

* Reboot.

Now none of you USB disks, flash memory sticks etc will be 
working (you just disabled them all). However you *can* try
your device, and it might have started working because there
is no longer a USB mass storage driver that tries to hook onto
the mass storage interface of your device.

If not even blacklisting works (check with 
"lsmod | grep usb-storage"), there is some problem with
something else and you may need to remove or rename the file 
/lib/modules/<VERSION>/kernel/drivers/usb/storage/usb-storage.ko
manually.

If you find the PerfectSolution(TM) to this dilemma, so you 
can properly switch for individual devices whether to use it
as USB mass storage or not, please tell us how you did it. We
know we cannot use udev, because udev is called after-the-fact:
the device is already configured for USB mass storage when
udev is called.


Calendar and contact support:
-----------------------------

The Creative Zen series can read VCALENDAR2 (.ics) files
and VCard (.vcf) files from programs like for example
Evolution with the following limitations/conditions: 

- The file must be in DOS (CR/LF) format, use the unix2dos
  program to convert if needed

- Repeat events in calendar files do not seem to be supported, 
  entries will only appear once.

- Calendar (.ics) files should be stored in the folder "My Organizer" 
  when sent to the device (this directory should be autodetected
  for use with calendar files, otherwise use the option 
  -f "My Organizer" to sendfile for this) Apparently this file can
  also contain tasklists.

- Contact (.vcf) files should be stored in the folder "My Contacts"
  when sent to the device. (-f "My Contacts")

- Some devices are picky about the name of the calendar and
  contact files. For example the Zen Microphoto wants:

  Calendar: My Organizer/6651416.ics
  Contacts: My Organizer/6651416.vcf


Syncing in with Evolution and Creative Devices
----------------------------------------------

Evolution can easily export .ics an .vcf files, but you currently
need some command-line hacking to get you stuff copied over in
one direction host -> device. The examples/ directory contains a script
created for the Creative Zen Microphoto by Nicolas Tetreault.


It's Not Our Bug!
-----------------

Some MTP devices have strange pecularities. We try to work around
these whenever we can, sometimes we cannot work around it or we 
cannot test your solution.

* The Zen Vision:M (possibly more Creative Zens) has a firmware bug
  that makes it drop the last two characters off a playlist name.
  It is fixed in later firmware.

* For Creative Technology devices, there are hard limits on how
  many files can be put onto the device. For a 30 GiB device (like
  the Zen Xtra) the limit is 6000, for a 60 GiB device the limit
  is 15000 files. For further Creative pecularities, see the
  FAQ sections at www.nomadness.net.

* Sandisk sansa c150 and probably several other Sandisk devices 
  (and possibly devices from other manufacturers) have a dual
  mode with MTP and USB mass storage. The device will initially
  claim to be mass storage so udev will capture is and make the
  use of MTP mode impossible. One way of avoiding it could be to
  be to blacklist the "usb-storage" module in 
  /etc/modprobe.c/blacklist with a row like this:
  "blacklist usb-storage". Some have even removed the
  "usb-storage.ko" (kernel module file) to avoid loading.

* The iriver devices (possibly all of them) cannot handle the 
  enhanced GetObjectPropList MTP command (0x9805) properly. So 
  they have been banned from using it.

* iriver devices have problems with older versions of libmtp and
  with new devices libmtp does not know of as of yet, since it
  has an oldstyle USB device controller that cannot handle zero
  writes. (Register your device with us!) All their devices are
  likely to need a special device flag in the src/libusb-glue.c
  database.

* The Samsung Yepp T9 has several strange characteristics, some
  that we've managed to work around. (For example it will return
  multiple PTP packages in a single transaction.)

* The early firmware for Philips HDD players is known to be 
  problematic. Please upgrade to as new firmware as you can get.
  (Yes this requires some kind of Windows Installation I think.)

* Very few devices that implement GetObjectPropList (0x9805) will
  return the entire object list if you request a list for object
  0xffffffffu. (But they should.) So we're currently not using 
  that feature.


Lost symbols
------------

Shared libraries can be troublesome to users not experienced with
them. The following is a condensed version of a generic question 
that has appeared on the libmtp mailing list from time to time.

> PTP: Opening session
> Queried Creative Zen Vision:M
> gnomad2: relocation error: gnomad2: undefined symbol:
> LIBMTP_Get_Storageinfo
> (...)
> Are these type of errors related to libmtp or something else?

The problem is of a generic nature, and related to dynamic library 
loading. It is colloquially known as "dependency hell".
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependency_hell)

The gnomad2 application calls upon the dynamic linker in Linux to
resolve the symbol "LIBMTP_Get_Storageinfo" or any other symbol
(ELF symbol, or link point or whatever you want to call them, a
symbol is a label on a memory address that the linker shall 
resolve from label to actual address.)
For generic information on this subject see the INSTALL file and
this Wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_(computing)

When Linux /lib/ld-linux.so.X is called to link the symbols compiled 
into gnomad2 (or any other executable using libmtp), it examines the 
ELF file for the libmtp.so.X file it finds first and cannot resolve 
the symbol "LIBMTP_Get_Storageinfo" (or whichever symbol you have a
problem witj) from it, since it's probably not there. There are many 
possible causes of this symbol breakage:

1) You installed precompiled libmtp and gnomad2 packages (RPMs, debs
    whatever) that do not match up. Typical cause: your gnomad2 package was
    built against a newer version of libmtp than what's installed on your
    machine. Another typical cause: you installed a package you found on
    the web, somewhere, the dependency resolution system did not protest
    properly (as it should) or you forced it to install anyway, ignoring
    some warnings.

2) You compiled libmtp and/or gnomad2 from source, installing both or
    either in /usr/local/lib and /usr/local/bin. This means at compile-time
    gnomad2 finds the libmtp library in /usr/local/lib but at runtime, it
    depends on the Linux system wide library loader (/lib/ld-linux.so.X) in
    order to resolve the symbols. This loader will look into the file
    /etc/ld.so.conf and/or the folder /etc/ld.so.conf.d in order to find
    paths to libraries to be used for resolving the symbols. If you have
    some older version of libmtp in e.g. /usr/lib (typically installed by a
    package manager) it will take precedence over the new version you just
    installed in /usr/local/lib and the newly compiled library in
    /usr/local/lib will *not* be used, resulting in this error message.

3) You really did install the very latest versions (as of writing libmtp
    0.1.5 and gnomad2 2.8.11) from source and there really is no
    pre-installed package of either on your machine. In that case I'm
    totally lost, I have no idea what's causing this.

Typical remedies:

1) If you don't want to mess around with your system and risk these
    situations, only use pre-packaged software that came with the
    distribution or its official support channels. If it still breaks,
    blame your distribution, they're not packaging correctly. Relying on
    properly packaged software and not installing things yourself *is* the
    Linux solution to the "dependency hell" problem.

2) Read about dynamically linked library handling until the stuff I wrote
    about in the previous list sounds like music to your ears, inspect
    your /lib, /usr/lib, /usr/local/lib, /etc/ld.so.conf and the
    /etc/ld.so.conf.d, remove all pre-packed versions using RPM, APT,
    YaST or whatever your distribution uses, compile libmtp and gnomad2
    (or whatever) from source only and you will be enlighted.

I don't know if this helps you, it's the best answer we can give.