transfered files get renamed

[wcause]

Hello everyone! I've installed mint 15 64bit xfce edition few days ago over my ubuntu that I've been using for a few months so I could say know some basics about terminal, scripting & stuff like that but I still consider myself a newbie in linux world. My current problem is that whenever I transfer files from my smartphone(sony xperia go, android 4.1.2) all the files lose their original names and get renamed into random 4 digit numbers.
It doesn't matter if it is a single file or a folder with folders inside of itself, they all get renamed. I've put this issue up on newbie section mostly because I really can't identify the source of my problem, is it file manager, drivers, android? I'm really clueless and I hope I'll find some help here. I've also tried to google up the problem but all of the results that I got were dealing with file renaming itself and not with a specific issues like mine.

[Spearmint2]

Does this happen to all types of files or just image files?

I believe Android keeps the original date/time/number assigned to the file and then the "filename" is just a referenced link to the actual file by the orignal name.

[wcause]

Does this happen to all types of files or just image files?

I believe Android keeps the original date/time/number assigned to the file and then the "filename" is just a referenced link to the actual file by the orignal name.

It happens to every file that I copy from my phone to any of my directories. I really need to solve this problem because I have like 20 gb of music & media on my phone as a backup from my old distro files. Do you have any idea how this problem could be solved or at least identified?

[Spearmint2]

I know AirDroid is used for Windows, I don't know what you can use for Linux, even though Android is based to a degree on Linux. I've heard you can save from the SD card to the internal and then transfer the files with names remaining same, but no opportunity to try and confirm it.


http://www.ubuntubuzz.com/2012/02/airdroid-access-your-android-phone-from.html

[wcause]

Well the problem persists no matter if the files are from internal or sd memory. What is even more surprising is that this problem never occurred to me while I was on Ubuntu(13.04) and isn't the Mint based on it? Anyway thanks for the help and the tips, I'll look up for the things you said.

[SC23]

Im a noob..but an old timer windows tech.. so I might be out in left field but here goes..

How exactly are you transferring the files? Hooking up a usb cord or from a SD card or what? And exactly how are you transferring them? Are you telling the source to "push" them or the destination to "pull" them?

Before you transfer the files, can you see them in the destination OS and are they named correctly if you can see them and just look at them?

Quite the weird prob here.. hopefully with a little more info we can at least determine who is doing the renaming and maybe give some options on other ways to get ya from here to there

SC

[wcause]

I transfer them via usb cable. I just click copy in my phone directory and then click paste in my desired os directory so you could say that I'm pulling them. While I'm looking at the files in my phone I can see their names and all, and even when the file manager is in the process of copying files I see the real file names getting shown in the little box that shows what files are currently being copied, but the copied file is always without an exception renamed into a 4 digit number. Also what I've noticed that my mp3 player recognizes mp3s real name and shows it in player itself without caring for files changed name, it almost feels like the files are being encrypted or something like that.

[Spearmint2]

sounds like a combination of files and metadata transfering together and what you think are filenames are actually metadata information on the files, which actual files have the date/number up system when on the phone. Metadata is like a mini database on each file and technically what you view as a filename would actually be a descriptive name in the Metadata. This metadata is in journaling file systems such as Linux and Windows (NTFS) uses. In Windows, if you right clk a file and write something in the comments section, then it's always there for when properties is accessed again, that didn't end up in the file, but stored in metadata about that file.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metadata

It would be similar to when you use a browser and see a web page's title on the tabs and information from it's tags on a search engine, but the actual filename is something else like index.html It's not a perfect analogy, but best I can come up with at the time, lol.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metadata_tag

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7552

http://www.linfo.org/metadata.html

[SC23]

I think spearmint is on to something here.. its like an mp3 file named 2243944.mp3 but in the mp3 file it has tags for the band name, the album, genre,etc.. and when you open the mp3 in a decent playlist, it shows all that info..

I think your real file names may be some flavor of dates or unique numbers..unfortunately..

One last thing to try is to copy the files to a memory card and then copy them to the pc.. this would be a push (phone to card), then a pull (card to pc).. hopefully you can try a few to see if they still end up weird named.. most likely tho.. like spearmint noted, the real file names are probably the numbers you see..

[Spearmint2]

Yes, the metadata may not transfer. When he was using Ubuntu maybe he was using the journaled file system like ext4, but when he installed the other Linux distro he used ext2 which may act like FAT32 does in windows when transferring from NTFS, leaving all the metadata behind.

In Synaptic Package Manager I see EXIV2 (libexiv2) and another called "tracker" which if the metadata transfered may allow you to read it. Another site said Android metadata is in a file of the same name ./metadata

[wcause]

I've installed both packages that you've recommended and none of them made any difference, anyway it looks like too much technical stuff for me to do to make it work and I really hate wasting other people time because of my incompetence so I'll just leave it as it is and rebuild my media collection from scratch. Thank you for all of your answers and time and please do not bother anymore with this problem since it looks like it's highly specific and it's solving won't benefit any important number of people here.

[Spearmint2]

It's not your incompetence, but the way they have several means of creating metadata and the way Android is setup to use that metadata. There may also be a problem with your file system on the computer if it's not EXT3 or EXT4 type in Linux or NTFS for any Windows system. You certainly shouldn't blame yourself.