Develop Bugs

[Q] Access to folders created by other user

I have the SM-T700 model with 4.4.2. android and created few user accounts on it so that few family members can use it with its own settings etc.
What I noticed is that if one user creates a folder on the device's internal storage, no other user can access it.
I've looked for options to change it but found none. Well, maybe that is exactly what Samsung wanted but that does not really fit me and my guys. That is quite restrictive and not even PCs go that far in regards to different accounts on the same device.
Is there a way around this or maybe an option to change it that I was unable to locate?
Thanks

That's the whole point of having separate user accounts. You can't have it work in a half hearted manner.

kenkiller said:
That's the whole point of having separate user accounts. You can't have it work in a half hearted manner.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you, but I think it can work and sorry, I do not see the point.
Here is the situation - let's say you have few GBs of family photos and videos on the Tab and two more users besides you. With the current setup, I would have to copy to two other accounts everything that I had already put on the device and suddenly something that was 2GB becomes 6GB and it is just great waste of resources.
It is like if Windows PC would not allow any other user to see what is on C drive except the stuff he/she put on it (and system files of course).
As we all know, for the stuff you do not want others to have direct access to you can put it My Documents but the rest of files on C drive is visible and accessible to all other users on that computer (by default).
Hopefully we see that concept soon on android.

If there's no restriction, try saving to an external sdcard or a memory stick connected via USB-OTG MICRO-USB to USB adapter.

UpInTheAir said:
If there's no restriction, try saving to an external sdcard or a memory stick connected via USB-OTG MICRO-USB to USB adapter.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is correct, the external sdcard has no restrictions in that regard and I have been already using it to bypass this multiple users policy.
On a device with 16 G internal memory however I do not think that was necessary.
But, yes, there is kind of way around it until things hopefully change.

[Q] Sending files to FireTV w/External HD connected

I have a rooted FireTV with a connected external HD (1.5 TB WD) that I use for watching shows and movies via XBMC. Previously I had the hard drive connected to my laptop that sits next to the FireTV via an ethernet bridge connection, but that became cumbersome and I had to move the laptop to a new area. My router doesn't support connecting the drive as a network drive, so I figured out how to connect the HD directly to the FireTV and none of the buffering issues are present like they are over wifi with the HD connected to my ancient laptop.
Problem is, I'm not sure how to easily connect to the drive (wirelessly) from the laptop to the HD while it is connected to the FireTV so that I can move new media to it. I might be overthinking this, but is there an easy way to do this through Windows 7 on the laptop or will I need to use an FTP service or other program to connect to the HD? The FireTV comes up as a device in Network and Sharing Center but I can't double-click and see the HD like you could for other computers.
Thanks!

For me personally the easiest way I found to move files from pc to the AFTV/AFTVS is to install an app called Web PC Suite. In a nutshell it allows you to move files from your pc's web browser to the Fire TV.
Install the app on your Fire TV, run it & type in the ip & port into your web browser on your pc, accept the connection & move your files. The caveat here is, as to whether this app will recognize external storage but if your run StickMount then theoretically it should, your device has to be rooted though, for StickMount to work.
I have the Stick with no external storage attached but moving files from pc the the internal storage is a breeze.

EL TEJANO said:
For me personally the easiest way I found to move files from pc to the AFTV/AFTVS is to install an app called . In a nutshell it allows you to move files from your pc's web browser to the Fire TV.
Install the app on your Fire TV, run it & type in the ip & port into your web browser on your pc, accept the connection & move your files. The caveat here is, as to whether this app will recognize external storage but if your run then theoretically it should, your device has to be rooted though, for StickMount to work.
I have the Stick with no external storage attached but moving files from pc the the internal storage is a breeze.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This worked, and I was also able to FTP into there after going through some tutorials I found online for moving items to the internal storage. It took me awhile to find where the USB drive was hiding, but I did finally click through enough folders to find its path and was able to move a video file there over wifi that played via XBMC. It did, however, take about 40 mns to move a 2GB file so I'm not sure that it's best for moving files quickly but it will be nice not to have everything physically plugged into each other. I do have root and I use stickmount to mount the drive; looking forward to adding ROMS this way and using the FireTV as an emulator. I appreciate your help!

Wow, 40 min for 2 gigs? I can't say if that's a limitation on the connection, the Fire Tv or a combo of both but yeah I can see how that can become a nuisance. Anyhow, glad you found a temp. solution for now.
At that rate of transfer, you're probably better off disconnecting the external hdd & connecting it directly to your pc, at least for files that large. Smaller files you should be good to go as is.

FireTV V2 (Sloane) Root/NTFS disk ?

Hello there, I have some questions regarding the FireTV
I bought one some day ago, I already have an AndroidTV box but it's sh*t and don't play 4k video so that's why I took the FireTV, unfortunately I didn't know that you can't put a NTFS disk on it.
So I have some questions, which can seems noob for you experts but I need to know, how can I read my HDDE (Seagate Expansion 3To) with the AmazonTV knowing that USB can't power it on, I guess the USB don't deliver enough power..
Also I'd like to root but I can't because I'm on 5.2.4.1 I tried the unbrick method provided here (I don't care if it bricks the FireTV anyway) but I'm stuck at "Reading 000000200 : 0%", I tried on W10, W7 it's the same problem. On Ubuntu I can't make the software working (Permission denied, tried with sudo & sudo su etc without forgeting the chmod -x...) I guess that's because preloader aren't the same anymore and can't read it.
Sorry for my english, and thanks for reading/helping.

Use Kodi and play with videos through network, I play UHD on external drive through my router with Kodi. I connect with SMB in Kodi. At least this works for me....

This is what I was doing before I bought the HDDE.. The problem is that I can't let my computer ON every night (I sleep with the TV yeah, bad habits ), It's been almost 1 year that my computer runs 24/24..

I use a wireless router that I plug a external hard drive into. I use it as a network drive, all my fire tv's and computers have access to it. Can you plug it into your router?

Unfortunately you don't have root, so looks like streaming content may be your only option. Personally I hate streaming and don't want to clog up my network so I use a rooted Fire TV with an external NTFS hard drive.
To answer the first half of your question you need to use a powered hub. The Fire TV can't power an external HDD, only thumb drives. Plug your external HDD into the hub, then the hub into the Fire TV. Works like a charm. I have a 4 TB HDD that I use for Kodi.
For those who do have root and want to use an external NTFS formatted hard drive (for those big HD files that go over 4 GB) I have a tutorial here: https://tinyurl.com/mgzvy52
You are wasting your time trying to root 5.2.4.1 on an unrooted device. The only method available is the one where you have to break out the soldering iron.

Michajin said:
I use a wireless router that I plug a external hard drive into. I use it as a network drive, all my fire tv's and computers have access to it. Can you plug it into your router?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I do not have wireless router, also 4k movies would be laggy I guess. But thanks for the tip, I'll see if I can do something with it.
Thanks a lot PhoenixMark, that's what I saw on another thread, you can not root unless you dissasemble the FireTV.
Thanks for the tutorial, really appreciate.

FireTV External Storage Options

Hello,
I am thinking of using my FireTV more. I would like to know what people suggest for external storage. I had a 500GB or 1TB old external USB drive and I cannot get the FireTV to recognize it. About to pull the trigger on a new external drive. Suggestions? Once connected should I change the way I have my apps etc installed? Help appreciated.
Thank you,

thesticks00 said:
Hello,
I am thinking of using my FireTV more. I would like to know what people suggest for external storage. I had a 500GB or 1TB old external USB drive and I cannot get the FireTV to recognize it. About to pull the trigger on a new external drive. Suggestions? Once connected should I change the way I have my apps etc installed? Help appreciated.
Thank you,
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi! Did you format that USB drive as FAT-32? Shockingly, that's the only format that standard Fire TVs allow. I've read of a few hacks that allegedly allow other formats (I don't know if they work), but otherwise you're forced to use FAT-32. That's obviously particularly sub-optimal, since that file system only allows files up to 2 GB in size; no movie file is that small...
Hope that helped!

Embee11 said:
Hi! Did you format that USB drive as FAT-32? Shockingly, that's the only format that standard Fire TVs allow. I've read of a few hacks that allegedly allow other formats (I don't know if they work), but otherwise you're forced to use FAT-32. That's obviously particularly sub-optimal, since that file system only allows files up to 2 GB in size; no movie file is that small...
Hope that helped!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is that the only requirement? I would have thought even if it needed to be formatted, the FIRETV would recognize it and tell me to format. It's a pretty massive drive (1TB i think). I can try formatting to that type and seeing what happens. I just assumed since it didnt even notice it was connected (and i know you can format drives using FIRETV) that either it is not reading the drive at all or the drive is busted. I will give that a go.
If you happen to have an external hdd connected, please let me know what you are using.
Thanks

And regarding app storage, since my first-gen Fire TV (unlike my second-gen model) has little internal storage, I try to move as many apps as possible to the USB drive. But you should keep crucial apps internally, so that if the drive fails you can still have a workable Fire TV. For example, leave any apps that would be necessary to help you restore a backup and the like in internal storage. And perhaps a few apps that particularly need fast startup on demand (I don't know any examples myself).
And you'll find that most built-in apps can't be moved to USB storage.
---------- Post added at 10:46 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:36 PM ----------
thesticks00 said:
Is that the only requirement? I would have thought even if it needed to be formatted, the FIRETV would recognize it and tell me to format. It's a pretty massive drive (1TB i think). I can try formatting to that type and seeing what happens. I just assumed since it didnt even notice it was connected (and i know you can format drives using FIRETV) that either it is not reading the drive at all or the drive is busted. I will give that a go.
If you happen to have an external hdd connected, please let me know what you are using.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unfortunately, the Amazon developers did not include any code to present such messages. If the drive isn't formatted as FAT-32, it will act as if you never even plugged in any drive. I found that out the hard way!
I'm currently using a 1 TB Seagate Backup Plus Portable USB drive, model SRD00F1, and once I formatted as FAT-32, it's working perfectly.

Embee11 said:
And regarding app storage, since my first-gen Fire TV (unlike my second-gen model) has little internal storage, I try to move as many apps as possible to the USB drive. But you should keep crucial apps internally, so that if the drive fails you can still have a workable Fire TV. For example, leave any apps that would be necessary to help you restore a backup and the like in internal storage. And perhaps a few apps that particularly need fast startup on demand (I don't know any examples myself).
And you'll find that most built-in apps can't be moved to USB storage.
---------- Post added at 10:46 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:36 PM ----------
Unfortunately, the Amazon developers did not include any code to present such messages. If the drive isn't formatted as FAT-32, it will act as if you never even plugged in any drive. I found that out the hard way!
I'm currently using a 1 TB Seagate Backup Plus Portable USB drive, model SRD00F1, and once I formatted as FAT-32, it's working perfectly.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you. I will definitely do that when I get home. Hate to barrage you with questions, but what have you put on your HDD. I am an avid gamer and I was thinking of emulating some of my old games and throwing the roms of games I own on the hdd as I am already running out of space on the internal storage of the FIRETV. I am also looking itnto ways I can launch apps/games (apks) from the storage (games like GTA VICE are killing my storage space and would like to relocate them).

thesticks00 said:
Thank you. I will definitely do that when I get home. Hate to barrage you with questions, but what have you put on your HDD. I am an avid gamer and I was thinking of emulating some of my old games and throwing the roms of games I own on the hdd as I am already running out of space on the internal storage of the FIRETV. I am also looking itnto ways I can launch apps/games (apks) from the storage (games like GTA VICE are killing my storage space and would like to relocate them).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey, I'm happy to try to help, so don't worry about more questions! Regrettably, I'm not a gamer so I can't speak knowledgeably to those issues. However, any third-party app that you can install on your Fire TV -- such as a game -- can easily be moved to your USB drive. And launching an app from USB storage is indistinguishable from one stored internally, so there's nothing to worry about there.
Just keep in mind that any app you want to run must be installed via standard procedures, by downloading it from the Amazon store or by using so-called "side-loading" tools such as ADBlink.
One thing I'm slightly puzzled by are your references to an "hdd". Are you talking about an external USB drive, or an actual Hard Disk Drive? The reason I ask is that I've seen a few claims -- which might well be false -- that the Fire TV has difficulty with Hard Disk Drives. But that very well have been based on misunderstood issues regarding power -- the Fire TV provides USB power, but that's not how one would power an external hard disk drive! The hdd would obviously have to be powered independently, such as by plugging it into the wall.
If you have more questions, ask away! I'll only be online for another hour, but I can try to answer them later...

Write to Attached Storage Remotely

I'm thinking about buying a Shield .....
One thing I do want really to be able to do is write to attached external storage remotely over a network .... either to an SD card or a Drive .... using something like Sambadroid (rather than via FTP) which can be set up as a network location from a PC/Laptop so I can control downloads to it from elsewhere in the house.
It's something I can't do with my current box as it doesn't give you write access and if you try and change the permissions it bricks.
Does anyone know if this can be easily done?

Witterings said:
I'm thinking about buying a Shield .....
One thing I do want really to be able to do is write to attached external storage remotely over a network .... either to an SD card or a Drive .... using something like Sambadroid (rather than via FTP) which can be set up as a network location from a PC/Laptop so I can control downloads to it from elsewhere in the house.
It's something I can't do with my current box as it doesn't give you write access and if you try and change the permissions it bricks.
Does anyone know if this can be easily done?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The shield already does this, the plex server running on it also creates a smb share, you will need to activate it first though, in the storage settings.
And I do think if you want to use another solution, you can, you just need to make sure that the smb share plex creates is not active.
Only downside is, it's only using smbv1.
But I do think nvidia is working on getting smbv3.
It does already have it if you mount lets say your pc
or a nas through the shield as a network storage.

mLgz0rn said:
The shield already does this, the plex server running on it also creates a smb share, you will need to activate it first though, in the storage settings.
And I do think if you want to use another solution, you can, you just need to make sure that the smb share plex creates is not active.
Only downside is, it's only using smbv1.
But I do think nvidia is working on getting smbv3.
It does already have it if you mount lets say your pc
or a nas through the shield as a network storage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for that ..... do you happen to know if you can then create network locations in the \\plexserver\androidstorage type format as opposed to ftp:// format ... things like iplayer only recognise the former

Witterings said:
Thank you for that ..... do you happen to know if you can then create network locations in the \\plexserver\androidstorage type format as opposed to ftp:// format ... things like iplayer only recognise the former
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is the path to my external hdd attached to the shield.
\\SHIELDANDROIDTV\Toshiba 2TB USB3.0
I don't know if they have changed it, but when you add a external harddrive, it will create the folder NVIDIA_SHIELD.
Under that folder you can create whatever you want, the shield wont see anything outside that folder.
So for example my movies are located here
\\SHIELDANDROIDTV\Toshiba 2TB USB3.0\NVIDIA_SHIELD\Media Server\Movies
If I did it like this \\SHIELDANDROIDTV\Toshiba 2TB USB3.0\Media Server\Movies the shield wouldn't be able to see those folders
And this is my path to the internal drive in the shield
\\SHIELDANDROIDTV\internal

Thank you for that ... much appreciated and have just ordered one!!
I wonder if they're bout to bring out a new version though as they're really hard to get hold of, yesterday morning 1st thing I could have order click and collect the next day at Curry's ..... by 11.30am they weren't available and ringing around virtually nowhere has them in stock.

This worked fine for a couple of days and then suddenly stopped ... it also seems to have made the button in storage settings inactive as I thought switching it off and back on again might be like a mini re-boot and get it working.
I also thought about trying something else but was also aware you mentioned not to unless the plex share was inactive ... frustrating.

Witterings said:
This worked fine for a couple of days and then suddenly stopped ... it also seems to have made the button in storage settings inactive as I thought switching it off and back on again might be like a mini re-boot and get it working.
I also thought about trying something else but was also aware you mentioned not to unless the plex share was inactive ... frustrating.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If the plex media server is not running the smb part wont work.
I've noticed that if the plex server is running then switching the smb off and then on works for me.
Are you on the most recent shield experience version?
You can try turning it off in the storage settings, and try running the smb server from another app, won't hurt anything.

Check system updates and Plex Server updates.
On a side note, I though smbv3 was out already in SHIELD Experience 7.2 update... need to check.

Partially me being a numpty as was trying to switch it off / back on again the wrong way but I manged to get it running again ... I think the main issue was to do with Windows Networking Security and got itself into a loop where I'd saved it as a Network location from a couple of machines as it now asks for a Network password if I go in via \\shield but I can get in without using the \\IPaddress and save them as mapped drives.
Another query along the same lines, if instead I re-format the drive as internal storage can I still access it across the network the same way or is it restricted again .... I ask as I'm now getting available space warnings and need to decide what route to take.
I'd be interested to know what data speeds people get across a wired network as well, I tried copying a video from my NAS to the USB drive and it was running around 6/7 Mbs, is that a limitation of the write speed of the Shield as I was expecting it to be quite a lot higher.

zinko_pt said:
Check system updates and Plex Server updates.
On a side note, I though smbv3 was out already in SHIELD Experience 7.2 update... need to check.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Its only smbv3 if you mount lets say your pc as a network storage on the shield.
The smb share the plex server makes is smbv1
---------- Post added at 04:15 ---------- Previous post was at 04:00 ----------
Witterings said:
Partially me being a numpty as was trying to switch it off / back on again the wrong way but I manged to get it running again ... I think the main issue was to do with Windows Networking Security and got itself into a loop where I'd saved it as a Network location from a couple of machines as it now asks for a Network password if I go in via \\shield but I can get in without using the \\IPaddress and save them as mapped drives.
Another query along the same lines, if instead I re-format the drive as internal storage can I still access it across the network the same way or is it restricted again .... I ask as I'm now getting available space warnings and need to decide what route to take.
I'd be interested to know what data speeds people get across a wired network as well, I tried copying a video from my NAS to the USB drive and it was running around 6/7 Mbs, is that a limitation of the write speed of the Shield as I was expecting it to be quite a lot higher.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can access it if you make it as internal storage, it will just be the internal storage that shows up on the smb share then.
I don't really know much about the write speeds, but there should be no limitations.
It might be because of smbv1.
You could try and set up a ftp server on the shield and transfer through that, just to see what speeds you get.
What you could also do it mounting your NAS as a network Storage, that way it should run smbv3, if you are on nvidia experience 7.2+ that is.

I am a little dumb when it comes to this. I have an external attached to my nvidia, plex server active, and can see server/hard drive on PC. But what I cant do is to transfer files. I really need help.
Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

GastonC said:
I am a little dumb when it comes to this. I have an external attached to my nvidia, plex server active, and can see server/hard drive on PC. But what I cant do is to transfer files. I really need help.
Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you created a folder on the external harddrive called NVIDIA_SHIELD?
If not, do that.
You can only read outside of that folder, but inside you can read/write.

I have not. I will try that and will respond back.
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