Mobian and Keyboard

[thismarty]

Hey, all.

The keyboard case on my PPP works fine in the stock eMMC Manjaro but it doesn't work in Mobian.

I'm running the latest weekly Mobian build (16-Jan-2022) and have done an upgrade and update in the terminal, but still no keyboard functionality in Mobian.

Any suggestions?

TIA!

[SukiiPooru]

I received my keyboard a week ago. I am running Mobian Bookworm and have latest up grades. When the pinephone is inserted in the case, the pre-de-encryption works ok but the phone stalls before the login screen appears ( I can't get it appear by swiping upwards even that is sometimes needed with solo phone if boot procedure is slighly extended past screen saver time).
Have you got Mobian to work yet?

[SukiiPooru]

I have received my Pine Keyboard but the phone does not work properly with the keyboard. When the phone is solo (running Mobian) it draws about one amp, it decrypts ok, then the login screen appears and I can login after the 4 icons appear ( sometimes I need to swipe up).

When the keyboard is attached I can not start it via the keyboard on switch, but with phone switch it does. the keyboard never draws more than 0.2Amps. The decrypt screen appears, but not always the login screen. When the login screen did appear the last time after a very long wait,multiple presses of the wake up/start button I was able to log in after a few attempts. The phone goes sluggish and hidden password dots appear slowly. Once logged in I touched the terminal app icon, then the screen went black. After a few presses of the wakeup/start button, there appeared a popup box with two notices saying uknown application, screen went blank, I pressed wakeup/start button and I top swiped the shutdown, the popup box re-apeared but only one message of unkown program.
The phone shut down. I removed the phone from the keyboard,put the original back on but the phone would not boot solo. I then removed the back, removed the battery and put it back in, replaced the back and the phone worked.
There seems to be some software or hardware glitch. How do I check the keyboard battery is charging/charged without the phone attached?

[SukiiPooru]

Hey, all.

The keyboard case on my PPP works fine in the stock eMMC Manjaro but it doesn't work in Mobian.

I'm running the latest weekly Mobian build (16-Jan-2022) and have done an upgrade and update in the terminal, but still no keyboard functionality in Mobian.

Any suggestions?

TIA!

I have received my Pine Keyboard but the phone does not work properly with the keyboard. When the phone is solo (running Mobian) it draws about one amp, it decrypts ok, then the login screen appears and I can login after the 4 icons appear ( sometimes I need to swipe up).

When the keyboard is attached I can not start it via the keyboard on switch, but with phone switch it does. the keyboard never draws more than 0.2Amps. The decrypt screen appears, but not always the login screen. When the login  screen did appear the last time after a very long wait,multiple presses of the wake up/start button I was able to log in after a few attempts. The phone goes sluggish and hidden password dots appear slowly. Once logged in I touched the terminal app icon, then the screen went black. After a few presses of the wakeup/start button, there appeared a popup box with two notices saying uknown application, screen went blank, I pressed wakeup/start button and  I top swiped the shutdown, the popup box re-apeared but only one message of unkown program.
The phone shut down. I removed the phone from the keyboard,put the original back on but the phone would not boot solo. I then removed the back, removed the battery and put it back in, replaced the back and the phone worked. 
There seems to be some software or hardware glitch. How do I check the keyboard battery is charging/charged without the phone attached?

[biketool]

Hey, all.

The keyboard case on my PPP works fine in the stock eMMC Manjaro but it doesn't work in Mobian.

I'm running the latest weekly Mobian build (16-Jan-2022) and have done an upgrade and update in the terminal, but still no keyboard functionality in Mobian.

Any suggestions?

TIA!

I have received my Pine Keyboard but the phone does not work properly with the keyboard. When the phone is solo (running Mobian) it draws about one amp, it decrypts ok, then the login screen appears and I can login after the 4 icons appear ( sometimes I need to swipe up).

When the keyboard is attached I can not start it via the keyboard on switch, but with phone switch it does. the keyboard never draws more than 0.2Amps. The decrypt screen appears, but not always the login screen. When the login  screen did appear the last time after a very long wait,multiple presses of the wake up/start button I was able to log in after a few attempts. The phone goes sluggish and hidden password dots appear slowly. Once logged in I touched the terminal app icon, then the screen went black. After a few presses of the wakeup/start button, there appeared a popup box with two notices saying uknown application, screen went blank, I pressed wakeup/start button and  I top swiped the shutdown, the popup box re-apeared but only one message of unkown program.
The phone shut down. I removed the phone from the keyboard,put the original back on but the phone would not boot solo. I then removed the back, removed the battery and put it back in, replaced the back and the phone worked. 
There seems to be some software or hardware glitch. How do I check the keyboard battery is charging/charged without the phone attached?

In this quote I removed your formatting as the text was so small it looked like lines vs text so it can be read.

Also I am having the same issue with Mobian sluggish and goes black after login.
Are we supposed to charge the keyboard first before attaching the PP?

[MNtinkerer]

Also I am having the same issue with Mobian sluggish and goes black after login.
Are we supposed to charge the keyboard first before attaching the PP?

I just installed the latest tow-boot and mobian-installer nightly installer image to my Pinephone with a dead keyboard and it worked. My PinePhone was nearly charged 100%. It is best for the batteries to be at full charge before hooking everything up. I haven't checked yet but in previous Mobian editions, it didn't allow for the PinePhone to charge at a fast charging rate, there is a patch suggested in the official mobian wiki. Make sure when charging to have the charger plugged into the keyboard case and not the Pinephone.



The issue I am still having is the keymapping for some of the keys is broken, for things like the pipe command. Will have to look into that later this week as well. I am running my system encrypted, with a spare SD card for storage. I mainly wanted the keyboard case so that I could use my Pinephone as a terminal so having it not work is upsetting to me.

EDIT: Fixed double quote box

[biketool]

Also I am having the same issue with Mobian sluggish and goes black after login.
Are we supposed to charge the keyboard first before attaching the PP?

I just installed the latest tow-boot and mobian-installer nightly installer image to my Pinephone with a dead keyboard and it worked. My PinePhone was nearly charged 100%. It is best for the batteries to be at full charge before hooking everything up. I haven't checked yet but in previous Mobian editions, it didn't allow for the PinePhone to charge at a fast charging rate, there is a patch suggested in the official mobian wiki. Make sure when charging to have the charger plugged into the keyboard case and not the Pinephone.

The issue I am still having is the keymapping for some of the keys is broken, for things like the pipe command. Will have to look into that later this week as well. I am running my system encrypted, with a spare SD card for storage. I mainly wanted the keyboard case so that I could use my Pinephone as a terminal so having it not work is upsetting to me.

I fully shutdown my pinephone running Bookworm snapped into the KB then inserted the power USB.  I booted and could not use the kb to enter my boot pw.  once I get to login everything moves very slowly like a very loaded down system.  I can login but any app that opens will crash the window manager after about 500ms, it reloads the window manager in a few minutes.  I noticed phoc was frequently taking around 35 up to 95% when I ran top. I am ssh'ed in but nto sure what to look for now.  I can't leave it charging for now; but I am really excited to be back with a full pocket computer vs a phone.  My N900 and Zaurus before it had both Linux and hardware kb, the future keyboard I have now is what helped decide on the PP to keep my 22 year pocket sized Linux w/KB streak going.
(edit)I am curious though, should I be able to use the keyboard to enter my mobian pin? I am pretty sure there would be no keyboard driver for the boot password.
Also, what do we use the keyboard on/off button for?
(edit 2)
I noticed with the KB on phoc was frequently taking around 35% cpu resting up to 95% when typing my pin monitoring top via ssh.

[MNtinkerer]

I don't understand enough about Linux internals to walk you through a troubleshooting guide with the intent of preserving your already installed system. If it were my machine and I had to spend more than an hour or two poking around, I would do a fresh install of the system unless there were a compelling reason to keep it intact like a necessary file that wasn't recoverable from a backup.

The difficult things with the Pinephone are the different hardware revisions to the main board along with the minuscule size of the Mobian project on Pinephone. To my knowledge the keyboard case is the same, but the Pinephones can differ leading to incomplete testing between releases. You probably have more Linux experience than I do so other than encouraging you to eliminate variables and take careful notes. I am sorry if I am not more help than this:

1) Have a decent USB-C charger, 2.5A or the PinePower 125w and charge the case. Ignore the battery indicator on the screen for now, depending on the Mobian version, it may be inaccurate.

2)Even with the Pinephone installed, charge the case. One of the forum threads states that charging the phone with the case installed could lead to damage and break the case. This would require opening the case to repair by removing the burned out component and replacing, something that requires a soldering iron and likely a magnifying glass. It also requires a continuity tester using a low voltage and knowledge of electrical circuits. Search the forum for more info, it has been a while since reading the thread.

3) Some people have reported pogo pin issues between the case and phone. Given the difficulty in fixing, this is one of the few times verifying software before hardware may be beneficial. A temporary hardware fix or at least verification would be to use di-electric grease on each of the pins to ensure contact. Taking care not to smear the grease between pins and causing a short. Mild soap and water on a damp cloth will clean it off, be sure to dab and not smear, and take the battery out of the Pinephone before cleaning. One could experiment with degreasers away from the pogo pins or recepticles and have water to flush handy just in case.

4) Software. Try reinstalling if possible virgin images, the more recent the better. Mobian has broken a couple of times with updates. Sometime in May-June an update made my keyboard case not work, that original image was from August of 2021. The recent images have worked, with caveats explained below.

5) Backups. I was using jumpdrive but now tow-boot to do eMMC clone backups. Piping the image through gzip to save space on my PBP NVME storage is a little more time consuming but worth it. It is nice to go back to images that work when one breaks something, instead of a new installation and update every time. I clone right after installation, 1st update, and regularly after. The only exception is bad installations are not backed up like the one I did the other day.

I am using the Pinephone Mobian Community Edition, with mobian-installer-pinephone-phosh-20220807.img, and the most recent tow-boot
pine64-pinephoneA64-2021.10-004.tar.xz, (actually updated March 5th, 2022) and the keyboard case. As of the moment the keyboard case works, but some key assignments do not work like |, =, -, etc. Also just noticed the calamares encrypted image did not expand to the extents of the eMMC device, will try reinstalling soon. All in all, I have tried Manjaro on the Pinephone and did not like it, this was back in March, and again in early June. Not a technical assessment, just my preference to work with Debian forks.

Tow-boot source:
pine64-pinephoneA64-2021.10-004.tar.xz

Tow-boot tutorial:
https://wiki.mobian-project.org/doku.php?id=tow-boot

Mobian Source:
https://images.mobian-project.org/pinephone/

Both findable through https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_S...ses#Mobian