Copying files to an mtp device(android phone in this case) using cp won't restore timestamps

Support
1

When copying files from phone to PC using cp command to preserve original timestamp, it works without any issue. but doing it in reverse(PC to phone) causes an error. I ise my Pc as a backup of my phone and when i restore it, i dont want everything to be jumbled up. Here is the error log(username redacted). Distro- Manjaro XFCE

[[redacted]@[redacted]PC /]$ cp -rp /run/media/[redacted]/D/documents/photo.jpg /run/user/1000/gvfs/mtp:host=XiaomiSM6150-IDP_SN%3AE0C22BCD_d7cde9d/“Internal shared storage”/Pictures

cp: preserving times for ‘/run/user/1000/gvfs/mtp:host=XiaomiSM6150-IDP_SN%3AE0C22BCD_d7cde9d/Internal shared storage/Pictures/photo.jpg’: Operation not supported

[[redacted]@[redacted]PC /]$ cp -rp /run/user/1000/gvfs/mtp:host=XiaomiSM6150-IDP_SN%3AE0C22BCD_d7cde9d/“Internal shared storage”/Pictures/photo.jpg /run/media/[redacted]/D/

[[redacted]@[redacted]PC /]

2

Hello there

May want to use the touch utility to try and copy the time stamps over, remember to restart your Android phone after doing so.

touch -r <original_file> <new_file>
3

Would i have to do that for every single file?

4

Assuming you confirm it works, should be able to pass an argument to apply it to all.

5

It didn’t worked. Same operation not suppored error.

6

Use adb instead:

Copy files to the phone:

adb push --sync /local/path /remote/android/path

Copy file from the phone to local disk:

adb pull -a /remote/android/path /local/path

With -z you can enable compression. Useful for wireless.

7

That worked, thanks.

One more question tho, how is windows filemanager able to handle mtp so well? Are there some file manager/distro in linux that is able to do that?

8

No idea, does it preserve the timestamp?

gvfs-mtp is used commonly in file managers on Linux. I guess there is a problem. I would rather say that cp does not support MTP, so non-linux filesystems. You can also try mtpfs:

mtpfs -o allow_other ~/my-empty-folder

More methods: Media Transfer Protocol - ArchWiki

9

Yes, it does by default. Just drag and drop.

I tried with mstfs also, unable to mount the device using that command. Here is the error log.

[[Redacted]@[Redacted]PC ~]$ mtpfs -o allow_other ~/Android
Listing raw device(s)
Device 0 (VID=18d1 and PID=4ee2) is a Google Inc Nexus/Pixel (MTP+ADB).
 Found 1 device(s):
 Google Inc: Nexus/Pixel (MTP+ADB) (18d1:4ee2) @ bus 1, dev 2
Attempting to connect device
Android device detected, assigning default bug flags
Listing File Information on Device with name: (NULL)
[[Redacted]@[Redacted]PC ~]$ ls ~/Android
ls: cannot access '/home/[Redacted]/Android': Transport endpoint is not connected
[[Redacted]@[Redacted]PC ~]$

Thunar also reports same error (transport endpoint not connected) when opening home directory

10

ok so which value? Example:

LANG=C stat file                                                                         ✔ 
  File: file
  Size: 6         	Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   regular file
Device: 27h/39d	Inode: 450728      Links: 1
Access: (0644/-rw-r--r--)  Uid: ( 1000/   user)   Gid: ( 1000/   user)
Access: 2021-07-15 16:12:28.233316937 +0200
Modify: 2021-07-15 16:12:28.233316937 +0200
Change: 2021-07-15 16:12:28.233316937 +0200
 Birth: 2021-06-10 03:35:36.971406491 +0200

I can’t believe it preserve everything on windows…

11

It takes a while until all files are listed at the background. MTP is just slow.

12

Cant confirm about everything, but i did preserved timestamps.

So should i wait before using the command or after using the command?

13

I tried jmtpfs and go-mtpfs, both got mounted successfully and copying from the device preserves timestamps. Copying to the device however doesn’t preserves timestamps.
Jmtpfs returns error

 failed to preserve ownership: function not implemented

While go-mtpfs doesn’t return any error

14