Genode OS

[PineFone]

Sculpt OS 23.04 released

I am happy to announce the today's release of Sculpt OS 23.04, which is the first version that we published for PC hardware and the PinePhone in parallel. Please find the official announcement at https://genode.org/news/sculpt-os-release-23.04.

Here's my report after multiple days of trying to get the latest update to work.

Installs fine, but crashes and then seems to get wiped from the SD card. For example, when burning the image to the SD card, the card says 'GENODE', but after it crashes the first time, the phone flashes the red light when rebooting indicating an error with the SD card I assume, and loads the default Manjaro OS.

Loading this same post crash Sculpt SD card into the laptop shows '16 GB Volume', implying the Sculpt OS has been wiped.

This happened once when looking around the Runtime options after turning on the phone and Network to Mobile. The second time happened when I walked away while loading the browser.

On the third time, currently loading the browser again and watching through the Status option which is nice to see each package, but it appears to the be the 2nd time through loading the same series of morph browser related files. I didn't pay close enough attention to the file names the first time it loaded so this may actually be a whole new 2nd set of files required.

This 2nd go around has bogged down on the qt5_webengine/2023-03 file despite nothing changing on my end. The first set of downloads when from fetch > % > fetched > extract relatively quickly by comparison.

The original Feb release of the Sculpt OS was much easier to get the browser up and running. Other issues I remember are still there like the "#" sign doesn't work when using the phone, but that's obviously minor.

The second one being it appears to still burn down the battery pretty fast during this 3rd attempt to get everything setup for testing (phone, network, storage, and mobile browser setup). The battery has gone from 71% when starting to 40% and it's only been about 30 minutes.

Hopefully this feedback helps. Looking forward to trying this out as a daily driver when you have your official release planned for August when texting is enabled.

Assuming I get the browser enabled for testing without crashing, I'll report back more.

[Josef Söntgen]

Installs fine, but crashes and then seems to get wiped from the SD card. For example, when burning the image to the SD card, the card says 'GENODE', but after it crashes the first time, the phone flashes the red light when rebooting indicating an error with the SD card I assume, and loads the default Manjaro OS.

[…]

Thanks for your report.

We did change the clock of the MMC controller and that could explain the issues you encounter with your SD card. I prepared a test image (SHA256 df08bf3f15a0c05d09067d512a4c6619b183bd0eaa745c86897bdd7891b9d99a) and I would appreciate it if you would give that a try. It lowers the clock back to the setting that was used in the previous version.

The second one being it appears to still burn down the battery pretty fast during this 3rd attempt to get everything setup for testing (phone, network, storage, and mobile browser setup). The battery has gone from 71% when starting to 40% and it's only been about 30 minutes.

Most devices are configured with static settings (besides the CPU whose frequency can be adjusted in the Device section) and therefor might consume more energy than is strictly necessary for a given use-case. We are going to look into that as well.

[PineFone]

We did change the clock of the MMC controller and that could explain the issues you encounter with your SD card. I prepared a test image (SHA256 df08bf3f15a0c05d09067d512a4c6619b183bd0eaa745c86897bdd7891b9d99a) and I would appreciate it if you would give that a try. It lowers the clock back to the setting that was used in the previous version.

 
Thanks for the test image. As a detail, I'm running the 3GB version since some of the doc's for this new Sculpt OS mention likely issues for the browser, etc. for the 2GB version.

Got everything to install and test out with your new test image.

Here are still some lingering issues:

1) I originally noticed the # sign doesn't work for the phone, but actually the issue appears to be it doesn't register text input commands. An example is checking voicemail which requires typing in the phone number and hitting a button below the touch pad to initiate the call. It then asks for your PIN and to press #. Normally when you start typing, the audio message to type in your PIN number stops. However, it keeps going implying it's not registering the typing. Curious if this also occurs for the browser if anyone can think of a site that triggers something when text is typed into an input, but no button is hit afterward.

2) When hitting reboot, I saw a brief flash of the Sculpt OS and then the red light went off again implying an error reading the SD card and the default Manjaro OS began to boot up. When accessing the SD card in the laptop afterwards again reads "16 GB Volume" instead of the previous "Genode."

3) I had the convergence pack hooked up to deliver both ethernet and a power chord at the same time to make sure I had enough power for installing and testing out the Presets. Briefly, DEVICE showed "AC," but most of the time it showed the power slowly ticking down implying that it's not receiving power. Note: this is the power chord I use on a regular basis and works fine with other PinePhone OS's.

That's what I've noticed so far and am happy to test out newer images before your next big release. Also, I started a poll to get Genode/Sculpt OS it's own PinePhone Software subforum so all related content can be found in one spot: https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=18211

[Josef Söntgen]

Got everything to install and test out with your new test image.

Thanks for testing, so dialing down the clock makes a difference (FWIW I mostly use “SanDisk Ultra” cards, which probably does not say much with all the different variants).

Here are still some lingering issues:

1) I originally noticed the # sign doesn't work for the phone, but actually the issue appears to be it doesn't register text input commands. An example is checking voicemail which requires typing in the phone number and hitting a button below the touch pad to initiate the call. It then asks for your PIN and to press #. Normally when you start typing, the audio message to type in your PIN number stops. However, it keeps going implying it's not registering the typing. Curious if this also occurs for the browser if anyone can think of a site that triggers something when text is typed into an input, but no button is hit afterward.

Noted.

2) When hitting reboot, I saw a brief flash of the Sculpt OS and then the red light went off again implying an error reading the SD card and the default Manjaro OS began to boot up. When accessing the SD card in the laptop afterwards again reads "16 GB Volume" instead of the previous "Genode."

I have not encountered this issue before. Does it make difference if you un-use the Genode Partition before rebooting?

3) I had the convergence pack hooked up to deliver both ethernet and a power chord at the same time to make sure I had enough power for installing and testing out the Presets. Briefly, DEVICE showed "AC," but most of the time it showed the power slowly ticking down implying that it's not receiving power. Note: this is the power chord I use on a regular basis and works fine with other PinePhone OS's.

Again, I have to confess not having used the convergence pack yet so I am not sure if that makes a difference. I will give that a try.

That's what I've noticed so far and am happy to test out newer images before your next big release. Also, I started a poll to get Genode/Sculpt OS it's own PinePhone Software subforum so all related content can be found in one spot: https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=18211

That's nice .

[PineFone]

Josef Söntgen

Thanks for testing, so dialing down the clock makes a difference (FWIW I mostly use “SanDisk Ultra” cards, which probably does not say much with all the different variants).

Not up on what the quality SD cards are, but I'm using one I got on clearance so it's likely on the low end, but still gets the job done (usually).

I have not encountered this issue before. Does it make difference if you un-use the Genode Partition before rebooting?

Not sure how to do that. Does it involve the terminal? Can you provide step by step instructions for testing?



4) Screen is locked vertically which prevents widescreen video viewing. I assume this is one of the last things you'll get to before official launch alongside enabling SMS texting.

5) Another "last thing" item is being able to zoom in. It would be helpful for the terminal (especially if it's needed for "un-use" rebooting).

[diederik]

so dialing down the clock makes a difference (FWIW I mostly use “SanDisk Ultra” cards, which probably does not say much with all the different variants).

There are various commits in the Linux kernel like "arm64: dts: rockchip: Lower sd speed on <device>" where "sd-uhs-sdr104" was replaced with "sd-uhs-sdr50" as the hardware was apparently not good enough to reliably use the high speed.

[Kevin Kofler]

Since you have issues with the microSD card getting mysteriously overwritten, may I point you to this thread: https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=681? Some broken fake SD cards are set up in a way where the actual capacity is only a fraction of the advertised one, and when writing to the higher-numbered sectors, it overwrites the lower-numbered ones (in modulo arithmetic, e.g., if the actual size is n, sector n+1 is actually the same as sector 1). That could explain what you are seeing.

I would suggest testing the SD card with f3probe: https://fight-flash-fraud.readthedocs.io/en/stable/. (Warning: Only use the --destructive switch if you are OK with the probe destroying the data on the SD card! Though, if the card is fake, even a non-destructive probe can end up destroying data.)

[nfeske]

1) I originally noticed the # sign doesn't work for the phone, but actually the issue appears to be it doesn't register text input commands. An example is checking voicemail which requires typing in the phone number and hitting a button below the touch pad to initiate the call. It then asks for your PIN and to press #. Normally when you start typing, the audio message to type in your PIN number stops. However, it keeps going implying it's not registering the typing. Curious if this also occurs for the browser if anyone can think of a site that triggers something when text is typed into an input, but no button is hit afterward.

Thank you for providing this background. The dial tones during a call are actually handled by modem commands that are unrelated to dialing. The current Sculpt image does not issue these commands. So the dial pad has currently no effect during a call. We should definitely implement the in-call dial tones until the August release.

Regarding the # button, it is missing only because I had no good place to put it, since one button position is taken by the delete button (currently labeled "C"). Down the road, I think we could place the clear button below the dial pad (where the current-call info is displayed during a call) and put the # button where it belongs.

[PineFone]

@kevin Kofler

Since you have issues with the microSD card getting mysteriously overwritten,

I use this SD card regularly to check out other OS's including the previous version of Genode/Sculpt OS and didn't have the issues I'm experiencing with the latest April update for Genode. If I notice the problem occurring elsewhere pointing to the SD card being the issue, I'll try the steps you recommended.


@nfeske

Thank you for providing this background. The dial tones during a call are actually handled by modem commands that are unrelated to dialing. The current Sculpt image does not issue these commands. So the dial pad has currently no effect during a call. We should definitely implement the in-call dial tones until the August release.

I had a hunch that this issue may go beyond the dial pad. I went to the coding tutorial site w3schools and found a page where it triggers events by typing in the input without clicking a button afterwards to cause an effect.

What I found when comparing to the site on a laptop vs Genode OS is that the yellow background keydown event occurs both in Genode OS and Laptop, but not the keyup pink background event when finished typing (Laptop only).

Here's the link to review: https://www.w3schools.com/jquery/tryit.a...down_keyup

This may be explained in your above response, but thought I'd mention it to help get the bugs out.

[Josef Söntgen]

I have not encountered this issue before. Does it make difference if you un-use the Genode Partition before rebooting?

Not sure how to do that. Does it involve the terminal? Can you provide step by step instructions for testing?

If you followed Norman's guide at some point you expanded the Genode partition and made it the Default one (so that it gets used automatically when you boot the phone). In the same section there is the Use button that you can toggle to “use” or rather “un-use” the persistent file-system.

So un-using it before the reboot prevents any component from accessing the file-system during the reboot procedure. Now that should not be a problem in general and it probably will not have any effect on the issue you encountered - but its something that is simple to try out.

(The expand-step will alter the partition-table on the SD card and Sculpt will re-read it again to perform the file-system resize operation. So its interesting that the GPT appears to get corrupted during reboot.)