Coda File System

more notes on Coda+Android

From: <u-thti_at_aetey.se>
Date: Mon, 2 Nov 2015 12:46:50 +0100
On Tue, Oct 27, 2015 at 10:28:24PM +0100, u-thti_at_aetey.se wrote:
> The Coda client installer for ARM Linux happened also to work on
> Android-arm, wrapped into some trivial "sandboxing": Venus runs
> "underneath" in a local filesystem while android is chrooted.

The above provides a _shared_ Coda client for a usual Linux system
alongside with Android, but then it is hard to put Coda cache
on encrypted storage - the client has to start early, before
any storage decryption dialogue would have place.

Of course it is straightforward to run the Coda client with its cache on
tmpfs but then you lose the cache contents when the phone is turned off.

It is also easy to put the coda client data on encrypted storage,
if you start the coda client "late" in the boot process.

The data of the client started inside Android will be unfortunately not
visible to the possible Linux running in parallel, nor the other way
around.

- A solution is to run an extra Coda client, over /dev/cfs1.

  This gives Linux, running outside the Android instance, independent
  access to Coda.

  The downside is no cache sharing between Linux and Android, but the
  client isolation is a very useful property. You do not have to worry
  about tokens acquired for Linux accounts being usable by Android apps
  and vice versa.

One extra note, Android apps exhibit the same behaviour as we saw
on Windows, they open files read/write even when they do not need this,
which triggers reintegrations. Thus it is important to limit the
access rights with respect to the apps which are not supposed to modify
your data.

Another suggestion is to uncheck any app options for automatically
"scanning all available data" - depending on the size of your archives
it can be much more data and much longer scanning time than the app was
designed to handle.

With such precautions f.i. VLC for android (from f-droid.org) works
nicely and is very convenient for listening to audio. It works fine
for viewing video data as well of course, if you like small screens or
connect a big one to your phone.

Cheers,
Rune
Received on 2015-11-02 06:47:30