[slickvguy]

Wanted to share some information with anyone who might be interested in this subject. I'm currently running beta 2.0, rooted.

When you get your playbook, obviously one of the things you want to do is copy files (especially media files) from your PC to the PB, so that you can play your music, watch your videos, etc.

When I connected my Ubuntu or VirtualBox (running XP) to the Playbook (as server), and used nautilus or explorer to simply copy and paste files, they would show up in the directories and they would be accessible to the apps. e.g. If I copied over an mp3 to the /accounts/1000/shared/music folder, it would show up and be able to be played by the music app. So far, so good.

However, when I would use SMB or FTP client apps to copy the files from my pc, they would NOT show up in the directories and they would NOT be available to the music player, video player, etc! You'd get the file permission error. Which is a real bummer, because I prefer doing it that way (not having to initiate the file transfer on the PC). So I did a bit of investigating, and this is what I found.

Using WinSCP, I snooped around the system and discovered a few things. When using Ubuntu or XP to copy the files over to the PB, the newly created file's permissions are ALWAYS set to rwxrw---- (no matter what the permissions were originally), the owner is set to "nobody" (uid 99), and the group is set to "1000_shared" (gid 1001). No problem. However, when using an SMB or FTP client, the permissions are set to rw-------, the owner is set to a large number which I can't figure out yet (e.g. 101541000 and 101561000, which seems to be a concatenation of a few different numbers?), and the group is still "1000_shared"! The group and group permissions are the key, because it's via the group and its permissions that you are able to see and read (i.e. PLAY) the files. So there is the problem, my friends. It's the group permissions. If you manually change the group permissions of the files to "r" (even if all other permissions are -), they will appear and play.

Why is this happening? I haven't figured it out yet. At first I thought maybe the SMB/FTP client apps weren't sending/creating the files with the proper permissions, but I'm not sure. It seems like the Playbook is still changing the file permissions, owner, and group, but to something different than when you transfer files using your PC as the client and the PB as the server. Why and how, I just don't know (yet).

I looked at smb.conf and other scripts, etc. There is a "force group = 1000_shared" in the smb config. There are also masks and modes in the config. All of those, and more, explains why the permissions, owner, and group are set the way they are when the PC is the client and the PB is the server. But I don't see how or why when using a SMB or FTP clients on the PB, that the permissions/owner/group are set the way they are. Is it the apps or the o/s? I will do more investigating when I have time.

If anyone can shed more light on this subject, I'd really appreciate it. Because it's much better to "pull" files off of your PC using apps on the PB, rather than having to "push" them to the PB from your PC.

[slickvguy]

Well, I was able to use a playbook ftp client, and it did not set the permissions to rw-------, so that app works (though it still did change the permissions). I don't have other PB ftp or smb apps to test, but I'll now assume it's the android player and/or android apps that are the cause of this problem.

[slickvguy]

Well, I guess I'll continue talking to myself a little bit longer. lol.

Spoke to the developer of one of the ftp clients, and he says it's definitely not his app, which is what I figured. It's a playbook/android player thing.

If you copy the files to /sdcard, which has links to the /accounts/1000/shared directories, it will force the permissions to rw-rw----, which is fine. So that's the "workaround" for files you want to place into those few linked directories (which includes movies and music). At least this way it works.

I don't know why the PB kills the group permissions for files transferred to other folders, but that'll do pig.

FWIW: A little trick when connecting your PC to the PB's USB port (for those who can't use the netbios name successfully). Since the IP address changes each time and thus you can't guess what it'll be (169.254.x.x), what you can do is simply put it into development mode, where it'll default to 169.254.0.1 and you can use 169.254.0.2 to do your file transfers originating from the PB. This way you can hardcode the IP address in the saved connection in your ftp client, for example, and not have to lookup the ip address each time.

[sadky]

I have experimented the same problem, and by now the only thing i can do, it is to change the permission of the file from Winscp to rwxrw-- at the Playbook. Coz i didn't find how to change the permissions directly on Playbook.