Ext SDcard unavailable in Options after KitKat upd [#11542]

[rusty]

This should be fixed in the current build 202. Can you confirm that it works for you?

Thanks.

-Rusty

[BigInJapan]

Hi Rusty,
My apologies for not following up here. I haven't had much time to play with this lately. I have good news and bad news. The good news is that sync is working on both of my KitKat phones. The bad news is that I can't really confirm whether that's thanks to your fix or mine.

In my last post, I had it working on a rooted, modified phone and not working on a stock phone. Since then, I rooted and made the same mod on the second phone, so I no longer have a stock one to test on.

If I get some time, I'll restore one to stock and see how it goes.

[BigInJapan]

Hey team,
This still seems to be a problem on my GS4. I had some time to experiment today, so I:
1. Uninstalled MMA
2. Restored the Platform.xml file to stock
3. Rebooted the phone (to apply the permissions in the restored platform.xml)
3. Erased the external card
4. Reinstalled MMA v1.0.4.0220 (Beta + Pro)

And I'm back to where I was. MMA doesn't see the external card. I uploaded log 87NF8Q1XZV.

Yours isn't the only app that fails to access the card, so I'm not sure this is a MMA bug as much as it is a Samsung thing. It seems like they did something weird in that platform.xml file around the Jellybean update for the Play Edition phones.

[bhiefer]

Hey team,
This still seems to be a problem on my GS4. I had some time to experiment today, so I:
1. Uninstalled MMA
2. Restored the Platform.xml file to stock
3. Rebooted the phone (to apply the permissions in the restored platform.xml)
3. Erased the external card
4. Reinstalled MMA v1.0.4.0220 (Beta + Pro)

And I'm back to where I was. MMA doesn't see the external card. I uploaded log 87NF8Q1XZV.

Yours isn't the only app that fails to access the card, so I'm not sure this is a MMA bug as much as it is a Samsung thing. It seems like they did something weird in that platform.xml file around the Jellybean update for the Play Edition phones.

Ok. Thanks for testing. It looks like GS4 has really some specific settings. SD card's root is writable but it is not possible to write anything to it. So I have probably fixed it in next build (221 or higher). I don't know how your platform.xml looks like, but with stock version, sd card will be probably read-only.

[BigInJapan]

Here's the relevant segment of the platform file. As of KitKat, what I've been reading is that it's the android.permission.ACCESS_ALL_EXTERNAL_STORAGE group that's hosed. So the work around goes like this.

Stock:

Code: Select all

    <permission name="android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" >
        <group gid="sdcard_r" />
    </permission>

    <permission name="android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" >
        <group gid="sdcard_r" />
        <group gid="sdcard_rw" />
    </permission>

    <permission name="android.permission.ACCESS_ALL_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" >
        <group gid="sdcard_r" />
        <group gid="sdcard_rw" />
        <group gid="sdcard_all" />
    </permission>

    <permission name="android.permission.WRITE_MEDIA_STORAGE" >
        <group gid="media_rw" />
    </permission>

    <permission name="android.permission.ACCESS_MTP" >
        <group gid="mtp" />
    </permission>

Corrected:

Code: Select all

    <permission name="android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" >
        <group gid="sdcard_r" />
    </permission>

    <permission name="android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" >
        <group gid="sdcard_r" />
        <group gid="sdcard_rw" />
    </permission>

    <permission name="android.permission.ACCESS_ALL_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" >
        <group gid="sdcard_r" />
        <group gid="sdcard_rw" />
        <group gid="sdcard_all" />
        <group gid="media_rw" />    
   </permission>

    <permission name="android.permission.WRITE_MEDIA_STORAGE" >
        <group gid="media_rw" />
    </permission>

    <permission name="android.permission.ACCESS_MTP" >
        <group gid="mtp" />
    </permission>

This might be specific to the play edition phones. If so, it'll only affect people who know how to deal with it. But if you guys think you find a way around it, I'm happy to go back to stock and give it a try.

[bhiefer]

And do you see the external storage as readonly storage in current build ? It should be visible in Folders view. This is all we can do. We are unfortunately not able to workaround this permission. Please let me know. You can send me new log in case the storage is not visible.

[Lowlander]

Additional reading on KitKat and external cards: http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/02/17 ... ting-them/

[BigInJapan]

Nice find there, Lowlander. If Samsung is going to stick to this in their mainstream devices, I expect we'll see plenty more articles on this pop up. Going to be a lot of headaches.

[worthington_j]

I'm running MMA 1.0.4.0229 on my galaxy note II with Android 4.3 and I have no issues syncing to my SD card. My wife is running the same version of MMA on her galaxy S4 with 4.4.2 and wifi sync to SD card does not work. However USB sync to SD card does work on her phone. When I click choose library folder in MMA on her phone the External storage location appears but it says Read Only. Is there any way of fixing this this issue without rooting? I'm not against rooting but I would like to wait until there is a method without tripping the knox void warranty counter.

[Ricardo]

Same issue here. My Galaxy S4 from Sprint just received it's Android 4.4 (Kit Kat) update and my SD card is reported as read-only by MMA. I'm very surprised Samsung and Sprint pushed that update down with no warning of it's side effects. MMA is not the only application in my phone which has been rendered useless by this update.

Do we know of any workaround through MMA's settings for this? Besides the obvious, which would be to use my internal storage. That's not really an option here. It is already 80% full!

[bhiefer]

Unfortunately there is no simple workaround. Google tries to force users to use their system app. The only option is that the manufacturer includes the workaround in their firmware. But you cannot make the storage writable without root access. Please let me know in case you need more information.

[BigInJapan]

bhiefer, the article that Lowlander posted a few weeks ago seems to be saying that under the new KitKat framework, MMA could still access the external card, but only by declaring a directory under the Android/data folder on the external card. It seems to imply that all synced music could go in that folder - MMA would be able interact with it fine - but then no other apps would be able to see that music. Also, uninstalling MMA would cause all synced music to go away.

Before rooting my phone, I did see that Android/data folder on the external card.

Am I interpreting this info correctly in terms of what it means for MMA accessing the external card?

[BigInJapan]

For some context on this, I thought you might be interested to see how another app is addressing this issue. The BeyondPod team recently posted to this to their FAQ:

My External SD card has become Read Only after updating to KitKat. What can I do?
Android 4.4 KitKat has introduced some restrictions that do not allow applications to write to the External Storage card. If you happen to have set your Podcast Download Folder to the External SD Card, BeyondPod can no longer use it.
While 3rd party applications are generally not allowed to write to the External SD card on KitKat, they are still allowed to write to a special, "application specific", folder on the External SD card. Using this "application specific" folder, it is possible to still use the external SD card for downloading and storing episodes. The only caveat is that if you uninstall BeyondPod, everything that is stored in the "application specific" folder (feeds, settings and downloaded episodes) WILL BE DELETED.
We recommend to permanently use the Internal SD card as your download location as it is universally supported across all versions of Android and various devices. Also any downloaded episodes will remain if you decide to temporary un-install BeyondPod.

From there it goes into instructions on how to migrate into the BeyonePod application folder on the external SD while continuing to warn about the consequences of doing so. The full post is here --> http:/bit.ly/bpkitkat

Can we expect a similar approach from the MM team? It seems to be the only option for non-rooted users.

[rusty]

I've documented something similar at:
http://www.mediamonkey.com/support/inde ... icleid=173

And we're planning on more changes as described here:
http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=11542

Thanks!

-Rusty

[Lowlander]

For those who rooted: http://lifehacker.com/sdfix-allows-kitk ... 1548731298