MTP + Nautilus fails with a lot of files on device

[John Moser]

Nautilus mounts a device using MTP through gnome-vfs with I assume libmtp. This includes newer Google Android devices like the Galaxy Nexus.

It seems that when the Galaxy Nexus (my test device) has too many files, it simply times out. The solution is to plug the device into Windows, remove some files, then go back to Linux and it will (barely) work.

My guess is it's just building a complete hierarchical structure first, then returning a pointer: gnome-vfs can't know what's happening, and must guess the library is hanging. MTP isn't a file system but rather an arbitrary object collection; objects can have parent objects, so the whole thing has to be read first before doing anything useful (you can't locate the "root" of the "filesystem" without reading every node; and then you just display everything without a parent).

In any case it takes too long, and decides it can't find anything in there.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.