debian+phosh running on PinePhone

[Beattie]

When I run build.sh (after fixing the shebang) I get an error message about not being able to find virtio.ko. Is there a howto or tutorial about debos?

[nikola]

When I run build.sh (after fixing the shebang) I get an error message about not being able to find virtio.ko. Is there a howto or tutorial about debos?

How did you install Debos? This sounds like you don't have qemu installed.

On a recent version of Debian testing, debos depends on:

libc6 (>= 2.3.2), libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.37.0), libostree-1-1 (>= 2016.8), busybox | busybox-static, systemd-container, debootstrap, qemu-system-x86, qemu-user-static

so installing those packages might fix that.

If you have those installed, perhaps it's worth checking that virtualization extensions (usually called Intel VT or AMD-V) are enabled in your machine's BIOS.

[a-wai]

@a-wai Your build.sh has a typo in the shebang.

Where does debos store intermediary files (like downloaded packages) by default ?

Oops, typo fixed, thanks!

Regarding intermediary files: there are 2 debos recipes, rootfs.yaml & image.yaml
Once rootfs.yaml completes, it creates a rootfs.tar.gz file, but no other intermediary file is stored, the rest (including downloaded packages) is wiped out at the end of execution.

In order to save bandwidth, you could install apt-cacher-ng, and change the mirror address in rootfs.yaml to http://10.0.2.2:3142/deb.debian.org/debian

Any suggestions on keeping this updated with changes?  Not sure if it'll be Sudo apt update and sudo apt upgrade, but then again I might find my answer after flashing.

apt upgrade will work for all debian packages, but as the phone-specific packages are installed manually, they won't be upgraded this way (at least for now).
I'd like to setup a repo with these in the future, but there will be some time before it happens, I'll be focusing on getting the hardware working first.

When I run build.sh (after fixing the shebang) I get an error message about not being able to find virtio.ko. Is there a howto or tutorial about debos?

Looks like your kernel (on the host machine) lacks virtio support, you should check that.

[Leiaz]

In order to save bandwidth, you could install apt-cacher-ng, and change the mirror address in rootfs.yaml to http://10.0.2.2:3142/deb.debian.org/debian

Thanks ! Internet is slow here, so if I want to try changing some things, downloading everything again to build an image would take forever.
I got the error "Container root terminated by signal KILL." which I think I solved by passing --memory=5000MB to debos, I think. I'm not completely sure this was the reason but it seemed to solve it.

[bcnaz]

Hi there!

As a long-time debian user, and being quite impressed with the looks of the Librem 5 software, I've been hacking a debian-based image for the Pinephone.
It uses phosh as the UI, packed with a few apps (not all are usable on the phone's screen)

Don't expect more from it than any other Pinephone distro out there can deliver, most features don't work yet and the phone feels really slow, but I believe this is a good starting point, as the display, touchscreen and wifi work (mostly) fine

For those wanting to try it out, here are the links:

• Image file
  
• bmap file
  

More details (and the debos recipes used to build this image) can be found on gitlab.
Contributions are more than welcome

Finally, kudos to the "low level software" team for the awesome work on the kernel and bootloader!

@a-wai 

 NICE FIND, 
        The wifi & browser work fairly well,  the interface seems pretty intuitive...

        I managed to navigate to the forum with this, the phone is getting pretty warm so it is probably in need of better power management ?

         BUT, Heck Yeah this seems a fairly worthy competitor in the OS arena !

        Getting to the forum was simple but actually navigating the forum is challenging in 'Portrait' mode only.

          SO I will say this is in the Top Ten for me.

      Thank You for posting this  !

---

Hi there!

As a long-time debian user, and being quite impressed with the looks of the Librem 5 software, I've been hacking a debian-based image for the Pinephone.
It uses phosh as the UI, packed with a few apps (not all are usable on the phone's screen)

Don't expect more from it than any other Pinephone distro out there can deliver, most features don't work yet and the phone feels really slow, but I believe this is a good starting point, as the display, touchscreen and wifi work (mostly) fine

For those wanting to try it out, here are the links:

• Image file
  
• bmap file
  

More details (and the debos recipes used to build this image) can be found on gitlab.
Contributions are more than welcome

Finally, kudos to the "low level software" team for the awesome work on the kernel and bootloader!

 
AWW !

This is 32 bit NOT 64

But I did find the manual 'ROTATE' that was a plus

[njha]

When I run build.sh (after fixing the shebang) I get an error message about not being able to find virtio.ko. Is there a howto or tutorial about debos?

I had the same issue, looks like it's just broken on Ubuntu as per https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sourc...ug/1795079. You can (probably) fix it by recompiling your kernel so that virtio is a module instead of builtin, or by running Debian instead.

[Beattie]

When I run build.sh (after fixing the shebang) I get an error message about not being able to find virtio.ko. Is there a howto or tutorial about debos?

I had the same issue, looks like it's just broken on Ubuntu as per https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sourc...ug/1795079. You can (probably) fix it by recompiling your kernel so that virtio is a module instead of builtin, or by running Debian instead.

Yeah searching the web that's what I'm seeing, I'm going to try to use docker, if that does not work, I guess virtual box is the way to go. Rebuilding the kernel gets to be something you have to redo every time Ubuntu releases a new kernel.

[a-wai]

A quick update, I have refined a bit the image: all pinephone-specific packages are now hosted on an online repo, so you'll be able to use apt to update the whole system
Apart from that, nothing spectacular, I spent some time to make sure battery charge works fine, hope it'll be OK for you...
The soundcard & camera drivers are verified to work, but userspace still lacks proper support (probably a bit of signal routing needed on the audio side, too)

EDIT: sound playback actually (sort of) works it goes through both the headphone and speaker for now, but the base functionality is there

A new image is available:

• Image file
  
• bmap file
  

[parkerwb]

Thank you for your efforts a-wai! I've been really hoping for a DebPhosh experience.

Curious... as a n00b... I'm trying to add packages to your rootfs.yaml and build my own image, but keep getting an "out of memory" error despite having 16GB RAM and not seeing anywhere near that in System Monitor. Trying to just add like Midori and maybe Geary.

Also... any chance you could add the powersupply app that postmarketOS uses or something similar? Nice to be able to see voltage and watts used in real time.

Thank you, thank you. I wish I knew more about this stuff so I could help you out. I use Bullseye as my daily at work and love it & Gnome.

[a-wai]

Curious... as a n00b... I'm trying to add packages to your rootfs.yaml and build my own image, but keep getting an "out of memory" error despite having 16GB RAM and not seeing anywhere near that in System Monitor. Trying to just add like Midori and maybe Geary.

I think that's because by default, debos uses only 2G of RAM (or something like that), you could try adding the option

Code:

-m 8G

or

Code:

--scratchsize=8G

to the debos command.

Also... any chance you could add the powersupply app that postmarketOS uses or something similar? Nice to be able to see voltage and watts used in real time.

That sounds possible, do you know which package it is? If not, I'll dig in when I have moment.

EDIT: Package "powersupply" is now in my repo, to install it just run:

Code:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install powersupply

You might also want to apt upgrade, as I've updated the kernel with a more stable wifi driver (actually the old one, but it works better than the current one for now)