File order is wrong

Notmyrealname

When I copy files from my pc to my phone, the file order (by file creation and modification date) gets all messed up. I tried normal copying (Fedora nautilus) and rsync and in both cases the file order is wrong. Any idea how to stop this? Thanks.

Eagle_Owl

Notmyrealname
Same here.
It is not possible to get a correct backup because all backup data you copy on a SD card or via cable to your storage on PC / MacBook will get the time of storage, not the original timestamp.

At first I thought it was a GrapheneOS file manager error and tried other file managers.
But then I realised that it is the operating system itself (maybe the whole Android OS, not GOS only). :-(
Almost a reason to give up GOS and go back to using iOS as my main system.

But Apple does worse with every music collection that you store locally (!).
So you have to decide which toad you want to swallow.

I will tolerate this very big issue a while longer, because I am using apps with their own backup or export function, so I have to backup only one file with my personal data per app, where the backup timestamp is okay, because this way the backup file contents my correct personal data and this one file per backup has the date and time of the backup.

If I had to make complete backups of apps with all files and also have to restore them frequently, it would drive me crazy and I would give up GOS.

I hope that the GrapheneOS developers will recognise this as an important problem at some point and correct it.

soul-adrift

Notmyrealname Eagle_Owl

Notmyrealname When I copy files from my pc to my phone, the file order (by file creation and modification date) gets all messed up. I tried normal copying (Fedora nautilus) and rsync and in both cases the file order is wrong. Any idea how to stop this?

If I understand your problem correctly, then I had a similar experience last year; found some solutions, drafted a post for this forum, lacked time to do the checks necessary before posting. Here is the draft, if you could check it solves your problem then please post something that is more helpful than my input. My view is that the problem is caused by the desktop OS, not Android/GOS.

To summarise for other folk passing by:

Intention
Backup photos on Phone onto (Linux) PC with a usb-c cable.

Problem
In a linux graphical file manager, with the phone auto-mounted by gvfs, then a naive copy of files from the GrapheneOS Pixel phone will not preserve the original photo file's date / time attributes.

Documentation
Best starting point might be here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Media_Transfer_Protocol

Solutions

gmtp : if this works for you, then gmtp gives you a nice graphical interface -- right-click > camera > download-files will offer not to replace existing files already downloaded.

So, this gives you a one way sync for free, which is very nice and makes this the 'easiest' GUI solution.

There are options to keep the date/time attributes: settings > Preserve file timestamps; enable this option to have downloaded files' timestamps modified to match those as on the device.
go-mtpfs : setup with command line from terminal each time, but then you will get a nice mount point device in your graphical file manager or use $ cp -an to preserve file attributes.
eg. mount pixel/profile with:
$ go-mtpfs pixel-profile &
and unmount with:
$ fusermount -u /home/user/pixel-mount-points/pixel-profile
jmtpfs : this integrates nicely with a graphical file manager using /etc/fstab.

ryrona

Notmyrealname Select all files, copy and then paste them into your phone storage. Most file managers will copy the selected files in file name order (I use Thunar), and they will get timestamps in the same order on the phone, so should be in the right order on the phone (file name order). I found it didn't work to copy the folder with the files in, because the files ended up being copied in a random order, and got timestamps in a random order. I never got preservation of timestamps to work, but at least order is right if the files have a date in their file name.

secrec

Unfortunately, what you use to transfer the file determines whether or not the timestamps make it through the transfer. A file itself doesn't have any timestamps, keeping track of these things is a feature of the fileSYSTEM, which can be read using the 'stat' command.

The one you're really looking to carry through is, of course, MODIFY, which is when the file CONTENTS were last altered. CHANGE is more or less irrelevant since it refers to the filesystem metadata (i.e., permissions, selinux context, etc.), and ACCESS is also irrelevant since its updated every time you read the file.

I use Nextcloud to synchronize data from the sdcard, and it carries the MODIFY attribute through.

treequell

Syncthing is another option that works.