libimobiledevice KDE4 having to use GWENVIEW twice to access photos?
 

My wife was given our daughter's old iPhone6 to be a camera for eBay. I notice that Slackware64-14.2 has the libimobiledevices already installed to allow iPhone/iPad/iPod connectivity. When I look at the dependencies of libimobiledevices.org then all are met, with exception of ideviceinstall, which I installed from SBo. I did not install ifuse since our gvfs is version 1.26 and I would think that it has "afc" support for Apple devices already. In fact if I start Thunar after USB plugging in the iPhone I do in deed see it mounted. However I can't access the device. It declares "Unable to connect". Yet I have set the screen to never close and accept the "Trust" this computer question.

I found the thread here from just two weeks ago which suggested simply using KDE + GWENVIEW and Dolphin. So I fire up KDE, and sure enough the phone shows up as a mounted camera in the tray and has GWENVIEW or Dolphin as options. However, I have to open two incidences of GWENVIEW before I see the photos and only then will Dolpin show me the DCIM contents of the "Apple iPhone 5 (PTP mode)" folder that appears. Otherwise it will not see the DCIM folder.

I've checked that my user is part of the plugdev group and that /var/lib/lockdown/SystemConfiguration.plist and the {device}.plist are owned by usbmux and grouped as plugdev. It seems to me almost like GWENVIEW is activating the afc for Dolphin rather than the kio_afc working?

What other step is needed for Thunar or Dolphin to open and read/write the folder without GWENVIEW opened twice to only be able to read from it?

I also notice that if I use idevicepair pair it does confirm SUCCESS and will show the iPhone if I run idevicepair list. But within 30 seconds it disappears from the list.

Or is it simply a bad USB cable? I don't have a replacement at this time, but maybe I should try one.

Any help or advice would be appreciated. Please withhold "Get an Android" advice. I'm trying to solve this issue with the iPhone.

Cheers, BrianA_MN

I doubt it is your usb cable. This is also definitely nothing specific to Slackware as I have tested this on a few other Linux distributions and the only one that works the way one would expect/want it to work is Ubuntu. It would probably work on most of the major Ubuntu derivatives. I think a big part of the problems is Apple making frequent changes on their end for whatever reason and Linux developers trying to catch up.

The only way I have found to not have to open either multiple instances of Gwenview or Gwenview and Dolphin is as follows, a bit convoluted to be sure.
These steps are on an iphone7 so I'm not sure you will get exactly these steps but it should be similar.
Enter passcode on iphone, plug it in to usb port and you should be prompted for 'trust', tap it and enter pass code. Click usb icon in lower right
of Desktop and select open in file manager and get the Apple iphone folder, left click it and get the store folder, right click the store folder and mouse down to Action and select Start Slideshow and get a black screen. Hit the escape key and the DCIM folder shows, click it and 100Apple folder shows and the images all appear. Click the icon in the upper right to get out of full screen mode and you will see another Gwenview window with the images. Can select images
here and then right click on one and select Copy to and enter the path. Problem with this method aside from the fact that it is pretty convoluted is I have been only able to copy one image at a time.


That's different from my experience as I open one instance of Gwenview which shows nothing, then go back and open in filemanager and the DCIM folder and all images show. Also opening two instances of Gwenview allows me to view the images without opening Dolphin. I can copy/import multiple or all images from Gwenview or Dolphin using the method of opening 2 instances of Gwenview or Gwenview and Dolphin so I prefer that method.

Getting images off my iphone isn't that important or something I do often so this method works for me.

If you do come up with a simpler way, post back as I would be interested.

yancek, thanks for the additional suggestion. I referred to your previous Nov. 2017 post the same subject, I posted to it after it was marked closed, thus the new thread to see if some Slackware 'experts' might offer how to debug this odd issue of two incidences of GWENVIEW. In my case if I only open GWENVIEW and then try Dolphin I will not get past the "Apple iPhone 5 (PTP mode)" folder.

Your experiences are different than mine. If I don't open the second GWENVIEW incidence and then open Dolphin I will not get past the default folder. On the iPhone6 I do not have to enter anything after tapping "Trust" this computer. Once I have the second GWENVIEW open I can copy all the files to the GWENVIEW folder. I can NOT move any files back with Dolphin, in fact it tells me the folder doesn't exist, even though it can show it.

I wonder if this is a udev or permissions issue, it acts like it. Even the fact the device will temporarily pair but then goes away makes me think this is the issue. Or this might be the proverbial issue of not having access to iTunes and therefore no way to sync iTunes via Linux, which I see mentioned in a number of threads about Linux and iPhones, and thus the iPhone doesn't accept the access of the computer for depositing files.

As we wait for other "expert/sage" responses I'll keep researching more and older articles for clues as to what is happening.
I also might try to find the solution to Thunar's showing the phone mounted but not allowing access. I'm especially interested in that because I don't normally run KDE, but use latest WindowMaker(includes dbus support) or FVWM normally for our working desktop.

Cheers, BrianA_MN

PS. UPDATE: I was just reading some other threads which mention that they use gphoto for getting the photos. I used KDE to access gphoto and I believe I now understand what is happenings. Gphoto has an 'INFORMATION' link, when open it provides info about the connected phone. Mine is an Apple iPhone running version 10.3.2 and using PTP Standard 1.10. It also list the capture formats and some info about the photos. At the bottom of the list it provides Device Capabiliities: File Download, File Deletion, No File Upload, No Image Capture, No Open Capture, No vendor specific capture, then lists Storage Summary where it again says Access Capability: Read-Only. So I believe that the phone is responding correctly to GWENVIEW and Dolphin not allowing write ability. When I mention to my son the folder issue he said his iPhone6 with 10.3 also won't let him use Windows to place any files except iTunes files with iTunes sync on the iPhone. This is how Apple controls access to their product, use their cloud or iTunes otherwise forget-a-bout-it.

If any expert could confirm this last statement, they will be highly appreciated. Otherwise, how do you do add photos, sync, or use the iPhone6 as flashstorage? Thanks.

Cheers, BrianA_MN

PPS one more note. A possible solution is to use airmore.com's application on the iPhone and then from a chromium or Google Chrome go to web.airmore.com. This gave me access to all the files, photos, music, docs. It is a WIFI local network connection only service, so it should be somewhat protected behind a home router. When I attempted to use the file download it suggested I instead use the desktop app, but that fails in WINE. I'll look into how that might be corrected. Thanks.

Are you trying to copy file TO the iphone or FROM it, or both. I've only used it to copy images FROM the iphone and have been able to do that using either Gwenview or Dolphin. I tried gphoto but I never succeeded in accessing the iphone using it. I don't know of any way to use an iphone from Linux as mass storage or to write/copy to it. Interested in it so if I come across anything, I'll post it but I don't have high expectations.

I've also had that happen and still do from time to time although it almost always works with 2 instances of Gwenview or one of Gwenview and one of Dolphin.

I've come across a number of posts indicating methods that apparently work with older iphones but that changes with every iphone version update. These rather convoluted methods are all I've been able to get working but on the other hand, I use it infrequently so it isn't a problem.

The information you posted from gphoto information is identical to what I have for my iphone7 except for the newer version.