Printing from SD Card

I can see that Octoprint includes the option to see the files on the printer's SD card. If I print one of those files, does Octoprint download the gcode and then upload it to the printer line by line as it would do with gcode on my hard drive? Or does it merely then remote control the printer to print off the SD card directly?

When I print a local file from Octoprint, about half the time I get communication errors (requesting a line too many times until the printer is forced to reset), but I still prefer the Octoprint interface to turning a dial on the front of the printer.

If the file is already on the printer's SD card, then starting the print from the printer's SD card via OctoPrint does exactly that. OctoPrint cannot monitor the print progress like it can when printing from local files.

The OctoPrint "Upload to SD" does use the same serial communications to transfer the data to the printer's SD card and will be subject to the same communication errors as just printing from local files. It is also very slow (i.e. Sneakernet is faster).

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"Sneakernet." Now there's a word I haven't heard in a long time...a long time.

Is there perhaps a way to get proper filenames to display in Octoprint when reading the SD card?

I should also note that I'm working from linux, not Windows, if it makes a difference.

EDIT: NVM, found a lot of topics after I asked. Going to see if this plugin helps.

You haven't mentioned what printer / firmware you have but support for long file names on the SD card are a Marlin firmware feature.