This is slightly relevant to aviation because it concerns getting data off the Sony FDR-1000V camera 
The only ways to get data out of the camera are
For the WIFI option, the slowest but in most ways the most practical, the only means is the Sony Action Cam app. This is hard coded to transfer data only to internal device storage
/storage/emulated/0/DCIM/From Action Cam
and this cannot be changed in the app. I suspect the app obtains it via an API call.
I need it to go instead to e.g.
/storage/extSdCard/DCIM/Camera, or
/storage/extSdCard/temp, etc
The total data might be up to 128GB but on most devices the internal storage is way too small. So the requirement is to remap the above path to an external SD card, or even an external USB flash stick connected via an OTG cable.
I found a couple of apps, Foldermount (doesn’t work) and Link2SD which almost does. It’s remap-data feature remaps “something”…
but the Action Cam app still writes the stuff into the original location!
I believe there is a generic syntax, entered via a terminal session, for remapping a path to another path. Does anyone know how to do this?
There is a lot of stuff online about this but it’s mostly one-liner posts contradicting each other. For example some of it says the SD card needs to be a specific format (ext4 or some such), or needs two partitions… None of this seems relevant because Link2SD is perfectly capable of moving apps to the SD card, which is 64GB FAT32 (I believe 4.4.2 doesn’t support EXFAT) and with only one partition. I made about 3GB extra space in internal storage with Link2SD, by moving apps to the SD card and using it to delete a load of system crapware, but with a “16GB” tablet there is no hope, obviously. The camera stores the mp4 files in 4GB chunks and with 7GB free space I have room for only one chunk at a time. The only way forward is to use the SD card.
The Link2SD app has already replaced the Samsung-modified file system as per this
It’s amazing that Sony hardware is good but their software is such total crap.
The Unix command for creating a symlink is “ln -s {target} {symbolic}”
That is very correct but I do not think there was any need for it – even the most blinded Windows user has learned as much about Unix/Linux today.
@T/S: I wouldn’t call that software crap, it is only basing upon its own criteria. But alas, no, I have no idea about Android as yet.
First things first, make sure you’ve completely terminated the app.
Next, delete the folder in your local storage. So:-
rm -rf /storage/emulated/0/DCIM/From\ Action\ Cam
(note ‘escaping’ the spaces with a \)
Next, make a folder on your target:-
mkdir /storage/extSdCard/ActionCam
Finally, symlink them:-
ln -s /storage/extSdCard/ActionCam /storage/emulated/0/DCIM/From\ Action\ Cam
Thanks. I got as far as deleting the old folder (using Root Explorer) but the app immediately re-creates it.
How can one enter text commands in Android?
Anything with “terminal” and possibly “emulator” in the description should work; I use “Terminal Emulator for Android” by “Jack Palevich”. You might want to run it with elevated (root) privileges, or, if you start it with normal user rights, use the “su” command to become root (as you would in any other *NIX system).
Isn’t there some sort of login/password, to get to the root?
I haven’t got a clue what those might be. Never set up anything like that.
What I also can’t understand is the reams of instructions all over the place about needing a particular format for the SD card. I believe the symlink is implemented within the filing system (not within the OS) which is why they aren’t possible on e.g. Windows (FATxx, anyway). Surely any symlink is stored in the internal storage, and can point to any file storage device?
I just get a pop-up window asking me to allow/deny the elevated rights. Of course, YMMV. If you point the symlink at a different type of file system then some file system specific operations (e.g. setting ownership) will fail, which will likely trigger some protection or other. If Android uses more advanced security measures (e.g. SELinux) then you get into another whole different set of problems with file labels and contexts being dependent on the path, etc. But I guess trying won’t hurt anything.
ln is not implemented in this “unix”
This actually looks like the file system does not support symlinks, not in the ‘ln’ binary (most *NIX commands are separate binaries) itself. IOW, this is ‘ln’ telling you “nope”.
The command syntax is: # ln -s existing-location symlinkname
So try this:
The above assumes:
– the link is to be created in /storage/extSdCard
– the link is to be named ActionCam
– the link is to point at the existing location /storage/emulated/0/DCIM/From\ Action\ Cam
If it doesn’t work, try a destination without spaces in the name, although in this day and age it should not matter.
