• Re: iPhone on Raspberry Pi

    From bob prohaska@3:770/3 to A. Dumas on Mon Jun 21 01:13:21 2021
    A. Dumas <alexandre@dumas.fr.invalid> wrote:

    1. sudo apt update
    sudo apt -y full-upgrade
    sudo reboot (just to be sure)
    sudo apt install usbmuxd libimobiledevice6 libimobiledevice-utils
    (found on https://libimobiledevice.org )

    That part worked, but I see
    Setting up usbmuxd (1.1.1~git20181007.f838cf6-1) ...
    Warning: The home dir /var/lib/usbmux you specified can't be accessed: No such file or directory
    Adding system user `usbmux' (UID 117) ...
    Adding new user `usbmux' (UID 117) with group `plugdev' ...
    Not creating home directory `/var/lib/usbmux'.
    usbmuxd.service is a disabled or a static unit, not starting it.


    2. Unlock your iPhone/iPad
    3. Connect using a certified cable (I used the USB-lightning charger
    cable that came with my iPad)

    I connected with bluetooth. The connection seems to be real, but the
    options are for a WiFi access point or an audio source. If I choose
    the audio source the iPhone's audio comes out through the Pi's speakers.


    4. Tap "Trust" on the iPhone/iPad

    There's an option on the Pi to trust the iPhone, but no prompt that I
    can find on the iPhone to trust the Pi, at least not in the Settings>
    Bluetooth page.
    5. Dismiss error dialog on the Pi (may be hidden behind file explorer
    window)

    No error dialog, and I can't seem to open a file explorer window. In
    the BlueTooth Devices window the options to browse the device and
    send files are greyed out.

    6. Click Open on that file explorer window
    No can do 8-(

    7. My "DCIM" photos folder opened and I SEEMED to be able to copy photos


    but they were unreadable by ImageViewer and Chromium.


    Well, you got farther than I did......

    Thanks for writing!

    bob prohaska

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From A. Dumas@3:770/3 to bob prohaska on Mon Jun 21 03:49:49 2021
    bob prohaska <bp@www.zefox.net> wrote:
    I connected with bluetooth.

    What I wrote was only valid for a wired connection.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Theo@3:770/3 to A. Dumas on Mon Jun 21 11:17:37 2021
    A. Dumas <alexandre@dumas.fr.invalid> wrote:
    bob prohaska <bp@www.zefox.net> wrote:
    I connected with bluetooth.

    What I wrote was only valid for a wired connection.

    iPhones don't do file sharing over Bluetooth, so that's not an option.

    (there are a few implementations of the AirDrop protocol, which uses
    Bluetooth and ad-hoc wifi, but none I'd regard as stable enough for everyday use)

    Theo

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    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From bob prohaska@3:770/3 to Theo on Mon Jun 21 18:18:05 2021
    Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
    A. Dumas <alexandre@dumas.fr.invalid> wrote:
    bob prohaska <bp@www.zefox.net> wrote:
    I connected with bluetooth.

    What I wrote was only valid for a wired connection.

    iPhones don't do file sharing over Bluetooth, so that's not an option.


    Aye, there's the rub....8-)


    (there are a few implementations of the AirDrop protocol, which uses Bluetooth and ad-hoc wifi, but none I'd regard as stable enough for everyday use)


    At some point I'll try a cable.

    Thanks very much for writing,

    bob prohaska

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Axel Berger@3:770/3 to bob prohaska on Mon Jun 21 20:30:18 2021
    bob prohaska wrote:
    iPhones don't do file sharing over Bluetooth, so that's not an option.
    Aye, there's the rub....8-)

    I don't know about Iphones, but every Android I know can do FTP file
    server over WLAN and be addressed from the desktop.

    At some point I'll try a cable.

    I do the above because cable does not work any more. I used to be able
    to plug the phone in and see a standard external disk drive. No more. Everything now is some proprietary junk I don't want.


    --
    /¯\ No | Dipl.-Ing. F. Axel Berger Tel: +49/ 221/ 7771 8067
    \ / HTML | Roald-Amundsen-Straße 2a Fax: +49/ 221/ 7771 8069
     X in | D-50829 Köln-Ossendorf http://berger-odenthal.de
    / \ Mail | -- No unannounced, large, binary attachments, please! --

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  • From Martin Gregorie@3:770/3 to bob prohaska on Mon Jun 21 20:15:47 2021
    On Mon, 21 Jun 2021 19:24:10 +0000, bob prohaska wrote:

    Both the iPhone and the Pi are on the same
    LAN, I don't have to use BlueTooth. An SFTP link would be even easier,
    apart from the iPhone's lack of a keyboard.

    Related thoughts:

    - does the iPhone offer an on-screen keyboard or if it doesn't, is
    there one available as an app?

    - alternatively, can any iPhone software act as an FTP server?

    - if you fire up the sftp utility on the RPi, does that get any answer
    from the iPhone?

    As you may guess, I don't have an iPhone, its possible it has an SSH or
    FTP server installed since most Apple or Windows desk/laptops won't.

    I have often used sftp, a command line SSH file transfer tool, to move
    files between systems which have an sshd server installed. On my RPi
    (Buster) system sftp seems to have been installed as part of the SSH
    clients package, so you may already have it. If not, you can always
    install filezilla and use that instead.

    HTH


    --
    Martin | martin at
    Gregorie | gregorie dot org

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  • From bob prohaska@3:770/3 to Axel Berger on Mon Jun 21 19:24:10 2021
    Axel Berger <Spam@berger-odenthal.de> wrote:
    bob prohaska wrote:
    iPhones don't do file sharing over Bluetooth, so that's not an option.
    Aye, there's the rub....8-)

    I don't know about Iphones, but every Android I know can do FTP file
    server over WLAN and be addressed from the desktop.

    At some point I'll try a cable.

    I do the above because cable does not work any more. I used to be able
    to plug the phone in and see a standard external disk drive. No more. Everything now is some proprietary junk I don't want.

    You've raised a good point. Both the iPhone and the Pi are on the
    same LAN, I don't have to use BlueTooth. An SFTP link would be even
    easier, apart from the iPhone's lack of a keyboard. I fixated on
    BlueTooth solely because my old phone used it and my only Lightning
    cable lives in a different room, where it's used for charging. Moving
    the cable will cause me to forget to charge the phone 8-)

    Thanks for writing!

    bob prohaska

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Theo@3:770/3 to Martin Gregorie on Tue Jun 22 00:13:38 2021
    Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
    Related thoughts:

    - does the iPhone offer an on-screen keyboard or if it doesn't, is
    there one available as an app?

    Yes. (I can't imagine how you'd use a smartphone without an on-screen keyboard?)

    - alternatively, can any iPhone software act as an FTP server?

    Probably, although see below for why that's not very useful.

    - if you fire up the sftp utility on the RPi, does that get any answer
    from the iPhone?

    As you may guess, I don't have an iPhone, its possible it has an SSH or
    FTP server installed since most Apple or Windows desk/laptops won't.

    iPhones don't really have a user-visible filesystem[1], so they definitely don't have an SSH or FTP server installed.

    I have an app 'FTP Manager' that allows it to be an SFTP client, which
    suffices to push and pull files from the iPhone end. Because of the lack of filesystem you are limited to the files FTP Manager can see, or using the 'Share' mechanism to send files from other apps to FTP Manager.

    [1] Essentially an app can have its own files (eg the documents created in
    the app) but there is no global view of the filesystem so apps can't see
    files owned by other apps, nor any system files. There is a 'Files' app,
    which can be used in limited circumstances to manually move files from one
    app to another. Also some media like photos can be accessed by multiple
    apps (with restrictions).

    Theo

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Martin Gregorie@3:770/3 to Theo on Mon Jun 21 23:24:44 2021
    On Tue, 22 Jun 2021 00:13:38 +0100, Theo wrote:

    iPhones don't really have a user-visible filesystem[1], so they
    definitely don't have an SSH or FTP server installed.

    I have an app 'FTP Manager' that allows it to be an SFTP client, which suffices to push and pull files from the iPhone end. Because of the
    lack of filesystem you are limited to the files FTP Manager can see, or
    using the 'Share' mechanism to send files from other apps to FTP
    Manager.

    [1] Essentially an app can have its own files (eg the documents created
    in the app) but there is no global view of the filesystem so apps can't
    see files owned by other apps, nor any system files. There is a 'Files'
    app, which can be used in limited circumstances to manually move files
    from one app to another. Also some media like photos can be accessed by multiple apps (with restrictions).

    Interesting! In that case, how do Bluetooth apps transfer files, i.e. do
    they have the same limitations as your 'FTP Manager'?

    And, of course I should have said 'sshd process' rather than FTP server,
    since AFAIK the sshd daemon can act as a file server when sftp is used to transfer files to or from a *nix box.


    --
    Martin | martin at
    Gregorie | gregorie dot org

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From A. Dumas@3:770/3 to Martin Gregorie on Tue Jun 22 01:58:52 2021
    Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
    Interesting! In that case, how do Bluetooth apps transfer files, i.e. do
    they have the same limitations as your 'FTP Manager'?

    Yes. Essentially there are no bluetooth apps; sharing is done from the app
    that owns the files and the medium can be "Air Drop" which is mainly
    bluetooth.
    (Of course there are system programs that manage bluetooth connections and
    the files transported on it, but they are not actors from the user's point
    of view.)

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Richard Kettlewell@3:770/3 to Theo on Tue Jun 22 08:18:22 2021
    Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes:
    Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
    Related thoughts:

    - does the iPhone offer an on-screen keyboard or if it doesn't, is
    there one available as an app?

    Yes. (I can't imagine how you'd use a smartphone without an on-screen keyboard?)

    Speech recognition. (If it was good enough, which it mostly isn’t.)

    --
    https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Theo@3:770/3 to A. Dumas on Tue Jun 22 11:46:09 2021
    A. Dumas <alexandre@dumas.fr.invalid> wrote:
    Martin Gregorie <martin@mydomain.invalid> wrote:
    Interesting! In that case, how do Bluetooth apps transfer files, i.e. do they have the same limitations as your 'FTP Manager'?

    Yes. Essentially there are no bluetooth apps; sharing is done from the app that owns the files and the medium can be "Air Drop" which is mainly bluetooth.

    AirDrop is mostly ad-hoc wifi, with Bluetooth used for initial discovery and handshaking. That's why it's a lot faster than Bluetooth. In general Bluetooth is so slow that it's barely usable for transferring files of any
    size (I tried to use it for videos from Android - really bad idea).

    The main use for Bluetooth on iPhones is audio and networking (tethering).

    Theo

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From A. Dumas@3:770/3 to Theo on Tue Jun 22 13:42:28 2021
    On 22-06-2021 12:46, Theo wrote:
    A. Dumas <alexandre@dumas.fr.invalid> wrote:
    Yes. Essentially there are no bluetooth apps; sharing is done from the app >> that owns the files and the medium can be "Air Drop" which is mainly
    bluetooth.

    AirDrop is mostly ad-hoc wifi, with Bluetooth used for initial discovery and handshaking. That's why it's a lot faster than Bluetooth.

    Ah ok, yes. I knew Bluetooth was necessary and it only works in the
    proximity dictated by it; I should have searched for actual transfer
    mode though, thanks.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Dennis Lee Bieber@3:770/3 to All on Tue Jun 22 12:56:43 2021
    On 22 Jun 2021 11:46:09 +0100 (BST), Theo
    <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> declaimed the following:


    Bluetooth is so slow that it's barely usable for transferring files of any >size (I tried to use it for videos from Android - really bad idea).

    The main use for Bluetooth on iPhones is audio and networking (tethering).

    It had enough latency that White's Metal Detectors came up with a custom interface for the Spectra V3i wireless headphones. Bluetooth ended
    up signalling finds long after the coil had passed beyond the actual
    target.

    {Hmm, pity... White's has gone out of business, and I don't trust Garrett
    to make use of the IP acquisition to produce the fancy models}


    --
    Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber AF6VN
    wlfraed@ix.netcom.com http://wlfraed.microdiversity.freeddns.org/

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From Anssi Saari@3:770/3 to Dennis Lee Bieber on Wed Jun 23 16:04:10 2021
    Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com> writes:

    It had enough latency that White's Metal Detectors came up with a custom interface for the Spectra V3i wireless headphones. Bluetooth ended
    up signalling finds long after the coil had passed beyond the actual
    target.

    I'd guess that was before Bluetooth LE?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From bob prohaska@3:770/3 to bob prohaska on Fri Feb 3 01:08:02 2023
    bob prohaska <bp@www.zefox.net> wrote:
    Axel Berger <Spam@berger-odenthal.de> wrote:
    bob prohaska wrote:
    iPhones don't do file sharing over Bluetooth, so that's not an option. >>> Aye, there's the rub....8-)

    I don't know about Iphones, but every Android I know can do FTP file
    server over WLAN and be addressed from the desktop.

    At some point I'll try a cable.

    I do the above because cable does not work any more. I used to be able
    to plug the phone in and see a standard external disk drive. No more.
    Everything now is some proprietary junk I don't want.

    You've raised a good point. Both the iPhone and the Pi are on the
    same LAN, I don't have to use BlueTooth. An SFTP link would be even
    easier, apart from the iPhone's lack of a keyboard. I fixated on
    BlueTooth solely because my old phone used it and my only Lightning
    cable lives in a different room, where it's used for charging. Moving
    the cable will cause me to forget to charge the phone 8-)

    It turns out that gtkpod is able, in a rather awkward way, to allow
    moving photos from an iPhone to a Pi. If one starts gtkpod and then
    plugs in the iPhone using a lightning-usb cable gtkpod will create
    a desktop icon representing the iPhone. Applications can open image
    or video files via the icon. Once opened, the file can be "saved as"
    to the Pi's filesystem. Simply dragging the file icons won't work,
    something gets screwed up and they can't be opened once moved. If
    they are opened before moving and saved by the opening program to
    the Pi's filesystem then the file integrity is preserved.

    The sequence is
    start gtkpod
    plug in the iphone
    load iPod(s) using down arrow icon (3rd row from top, 2nd from left)
    A warning dialog box saying iPod directory structure not found
    click create directory structure
    Select the mount point and model from the drop-down menus

    A long warning appears, but can be dismissed, and two iPhone
    icons appear just below the trash icon. They can be traversed
    like any storage device, but files can't be dragged, they have
    to be opened and saved to the Pi.

    The iPhone isn't remembered in the list of possible devices,
    although the iPod seems to be. So, one has to go through this
    drill from the beginning on every attempt.

    Certainly a nuisance, but doable.

    Thanks for reading, I was surprised by the discovery.

    bob prohaska

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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