I do understand that certain “scanners” will fail to see the contents of a “nomedia folder” but I just tested with Music app with .nomedia in /Bluetooth folder, plays an .mp3
and Gallery with .nomedia in /DCIM/OpenCamera, images open and can be scrolled fast – so I think no problems. Edit, following a reboot some files were invisible to Music and Gallery. All are visible to Files app.
It may be worth checking if a user was planning to use say a more complex photo display app which attempted aggregating images is some special way, perhaps.
Just try to reboot your device
As far as I know (and my knowledge may need a little refresh with recent Android ):
many apps relies on Android MediaProvider, including eDrive
the MediaProvider database is probably populated on filesystem events, at least for sure on boot
=> that’s to say: at next MediaProvider database refresh, your folder may be excluded and then invisible to Music app, as well as eDrive.
Unfortunately, I’m not aware of an easy solution here. Maybe renaming the folder with a leading dot could do the trick with eDrive, but it may also affect MediaProvider and other apps as well.
This issue perists in e/os 2.9.
I’ve enabled the sync and almost immediately I’m slapped with “storage full”.
I checked the files at murena.io, and I see that my storage is completely filled with music, which I really don’t need to back up.
And I don’t want to disable syncing of photos either, those are valuable.
So far, I’ve used a workaround of renaming Music to music, as this site lists /storage/emulated/0/Music specifically as the directory to sync.
However, such solution is not ideal, since some apps expect these pre-defined directory names.
There really should be an explicit option to chose which directories to sync, or at least an option to exclude some.
This is one of the cloudy mysteries of the /e/ cloud. Why are photos, videos and music coupled in just one and the same option? (Almost) nobody needs to pump up music files anymore, people do not have coupled devices (like iphone and ipod) anymore. And no serious music listener has less than 1GB of music - and having only a small and random (!) part of your music in the cloud is senseless. But music is always pumped up, also into a 1GB account. And always it fills the space. And always you have to clean up the mess. And always this results in frustration. They could have made two damned options for this easily for years to solve this ridiculous problem once for all. They haven’t.
One workaround could be (don’t know if this really works):
switch off media synchronization completely (including pictures)
put the pictures manually into the Documents folder
let the Documents folder be synchronized, this should then include the pictures
Just an update, it seems my joy was premature - the system seems to actually be case insensitive, so it started to reach into the music folder again.
I renamed it to music_, hopefully that solves it.
The length of this thread, and other similarly confusing threads on file sync’ing, just emphasize how screwed up murena has made this. If the goal is to help people flee google, they have failed. I don’t have a nextcloud server, don’t know if i can use the nextcloud app with murena workspace, don’t understand most of this techno-speak. I should not have to experiment endlessly to determine which folders sync, or if files sync up or down, or both-ways. I should not have to wade through years of community forums find a solution. I like my murena fp4, but the cloud service is a mess!!!
Seconded! The official NextCloud apps - Desktop from Download and install Nextcloud and Mobile from F-Droid - work well with the Murena cloud, and give much better control over what is and is not synced than the /e/ built-in sync
Ok, this is a great tip - thanks! So easy to install and login. However, as noted by others on various threads of this forum, it still appears to be a parallel universe of file folders that are similar, but not the same in cloud as on my phone. Nextcloud does excellent job of mirroring cloud folders to my device - but then I have to move stuff over from internal storage to cloud folders via Nextcloud. Not what I was expecting… It would be nice to have files I save to internal storage (say backups or exports) on my phone automatically get sync’ed to cloud. Instead, from what I’m seeing now, I have to manually move them over - not unlike Google or Dropbox apps. (Great news: I was able to point backup to cloud via Nextcloud.) Is there a way to mirror internal storage folders? For example: I have 2 Documents folders - one on my phone, and another Nextcloud version mirrored from cloud version.
Above you said: “Disable in-built file sync”. Do this in the Nextcloud client app account, or the murena.io account - and in cloud or phone?
disable in-built file Sync in Settings → Accounts → murena → Sync → Pictures and Videos → switch disable - there’s a screenshot in this thead further up where you see the option. It’s in the docs, but no screenshot.
I understand your frustration when you already have lots of device-local folders to be mapped and synced into a nextcloud remote (murena). It’s easier to have them all in NC, then bulk-mark them to be created+synced device side. No middle ground - eDrive that is, but without configurability.
There’s (closed source / optional pro license) FolderSync that can also do webdav/nextcloud and implicitly murena. It works by creating folder-pairs (left/right) and asks for full file access to do so.
I absolutely second that. Murena or /e/, as it was (questionably) named before and still partly is, was created to offer an FOSS alternative to Google-Android. Something that was supposed to give the average non-technical user the opportunity to get away from Google and experience the advantages of FOSS. At least that’s how I understand it.
My current issue is that sync is not working fully, but I had other issues before. And I am still baffled that we have asked for a half-decent documentation of sync behavior for almost 2 years at this point, with me diligently trying to keep threads open and pinging a helpful employee:
Murena achieved that I am seriously thinking whether all the hassle is worth it and consider going back to Google. I have to work, have hobbies, take care of kids and even family members’ phones, which I proudly/naively switched to /e/ and who also have various issues, so I don’t have time begging for help and tinkering, which means for me the promise was not fulfilled.
before you go back to Google, give that FolderSync a try, it allows you to control the exact sync behaviour between both ends.
If that app works to your requriements and you need the pro version because of folder count, it’s a one-time 10 bucks license at their page outside the playstore. No more working the thread mines.
The context of this thread wasn’t sync behaviour as much as “freedom of choice” of what to sync.
crabs referred to “file sync behaviour”, but if I get you right, you want to sync everything but files?
the existing documentation will address this and some of your questions - and really several screenshots in this very thread further up: after onboarding the account, you disable the sync switch for " Pictures and videos" - then only the entities you named will be synced, not files.
But I agree, the sync docs need a brush up. I couldn’t find an easy entrypoint in the docs for the basic account onboarding recently.
I’d also just close this 2022 thread, because evidently 30 posts in, users won’t read the top post and the topic is all over the place. I too am sad that it even needs a forum to sort out stuff.
many thanks to @tcecyk and @crabs, I have a look to the suggested post and documentation, to understand what eDrive is supposed to do, and to make some further experiments;
I have used RSYNC for backups (CP would be enough), but I must study the logic and proper use of sync, which is tricky and cloudy (for me).
“full study of ‘man rsync’ will be worthwhile”
yes, sensible suggestion !
“man rsync”, “rsync --help”, and the command line generated by grsync to begin : the documentation is ample and can give the philosophy of copy, backup, archive, synchro, all you could do against-a-cloud and then imagine what eDrive could do.
brieucs.
and then imagine what eDrive could do.