debian+phosh running on PinePhone

[a-wai]

To start the week with a smile, a new release is available

No major news today, except for one (seemingly) simple feature which required a lot of kernel work and pulseaudio hacking to make sure everything runs fine: automatic jack insertion/removal detection!
From now on, you can just plug in your headphones/headset and audio will automatically routed to it, including for voice calls!

Don't expect any other fix or improvement (aside from a few software updates) as I didn't have time to work on anything else in the past 10 days or so...
I might revert to the old wifi driver (meaning more stable connections, but no hotspot feature in the foreseeable future) during the week, please tell me how you feel about that.
btw, @fpb4 @buffer I'm still in need of some debug info to know how to fix your proximity sensor issues.

[dukla2000]

To start the week with a smile, a new release is available

Thank you for amazing progress Still the distro I have on my eMMC - occasionally play with others on an SDcard and quickly return here.

I might revert to the old wifi driver (meaning more stable connections, but no hotspot feature in the foreseeable future) during the week, please tell me how you feel about that.

I am not having noticeable problems with wifi but do not use it too much. For sure hotspot is still problematic at

Code:

$ uname -a
Linux Duklapp 5.5-pinephone #5.5.0+pinephone17 SMP Mon Apr 6 19:11:29 CEST 2020 aarch64 GNU/Linux

as in it can be started but within 30 seconds it is disabled by networkmanager scanning available wifi networks and normal wifi mode resumes.

So I have no reason to support reverting to the old wifi driver.

Hopefully everyone is setting their wifi up correctly for their country?

Code:

sudo apt install wireless-regdb
sudo iw reg set GB

change GB to your territory as appropriate.

[buffer]

To start the week with a smile, a new release is available

No major news today, except for one (seemingly) simple feature which required a lot of kernel work and pulseaudio hacking to make sure everything runs fine: automatic jack insertion/removal detection!
From now on, you can just plug in your headphones/headset and audio will automatically routed to it, including for voice calls!

Don't expect any other fix or improvement (aside from a few software updates) as I didn't have time to work on anything else in the past 10 days or so...
I might revert to the old wifi driver (meaning more stable connections, but no hotspot feature in the foreseeable future) during the week, please tell me how you feel about that.
btw, @fpb4 @buffer I'm still in need of some debug info to know how to fix your proximity sensor issues.

I don't use the hotspot feature except once in a blue moon, so it's no problem if it's unavailable for a while

I was busy but I wanted to get back to you on this -- so basically I tried accessing /sys/ by way of both JumpDrive and mounting the SD card. But, there is nothing in /sys/ folder ($ sudo ls -a /media/user/rootfs/sys/ ). I think that's because the operating system needs to be running.

[buffer]

I recorded a little video of the issue: https://gfycat.com/gargantuanbravebluemorphobutterfly

[a-wai]

I was busy but I wanted to get back to you on this -- so basically I tried accessing /sys/ by way of both JumpDrive and mounting the SD card. But, there is nothing in /sys/ folder ($ sudo ls -a /media/user/rootfs/sys/ ). I think that's because the operating system needs to be running.

@buffer yes, sysfs is a virtual filesystem, populated by the kernel only at runtime.
You have to remove /etc/udev/rules.d/10-proximity.rules (workaround to your issue) first, THEN run the system, and only then check the proximity sensor values in sysfs.

[p1trson]

Thanks a-wai for your work, going to try the latest release and will report back.

[buffer]

I was busy but I wanted to get back to you on this -- so basically I tried accessing /sys/ by way of both JumpDrive and mounting the SD card. But, there is nothing in /sys/ folder ($ sudo ls -a /media/user/rootfs/sys/ ). I think that's because the operating system needs to be running.

@buffer yes, sysfs is a virtual filesystem, populated by the kernel only at runtime.
You have to remove /etc/udev/rules.d/10-proximity.rules (workaround to your issue) first, THEN run the system, and only then check the proximity sensor values in sysfs.

Oh, I see! Yes, I can interact with the screen now that I removed that file.

I didn't use a ruler (I can get one if necessary) but the readings are:

0cm: over 3000
1cm: 2500-2700
2cm: ~2400-2450
3cm: 2400
5cm: ~2375-2380
10cm: ~2360-2365
No hand, phone comfortable distance from my face (~30cm?) while looking at it: 2360
Phone on flat surface, nothing near it: 2300-2400

[p1trson]

So first findings, and what I do recommend:
1) apt-get install openssh-server
- to be able to connect to pinphone e.g from PC, transfer files etc.
- can this be installed and enabled by default?
2) systemctl enable ssh
- for ssh server to be started when system is started/restarted
3) iw dev wlan0 set power_save off
- thanks for this hint ! yes it does solve the problems with wifi stability /functionality
- does this mean we know where the problem is ?
- is phone going to draw even more power with this ?
4) for apps not scaling properly, temporarily you can :
change /usr/share/phosh/rootston.ini
[outputSI-1]
scale = 2
- change the scale to 1 or 1.5 and reboot (or maybe there's another way not requiring reboot)
- found in pmOS thread (thanks!)
5) can Vim be installed by default ?
6) one of my aims is to use Jami with pinephone
- it doesn't scale properly at all (even when changing scale in /usr/share/phosh/rootston.ini, can we fix it or do I need to fire up issue in Jami's git ?
- the keyboard with Jami is not working properly. All of the keys do nothing, I have noticed that pressing backspace key it outputs '=' meaning that I cannot login at all, again can we fix it or do I need to fire up issue in Jami's git ?
7) (again) can we have another keyboard ? the one there currently is not really usable e.g when working in terminal. I've seen better, not sure if in UBports or pmOS/plasma
8) browser - FF works, but I really hate the zoom in/out.
- yes I know it's FF's fault, but is there any alternative to FF which is mobile friendly without sacrificing usability/security at all/too much ?

[a-wai]

No hand, phone comfortable distance from my face (~30cm?) while looking at it: 2360
Phone on flat surface, nothing near it: 2300-2400

OK thanks, what about the other in_proximity_* files? (distance doesn't matter here, don't bother checking the values multiple times, once will be enough)

[janw]

1) apt-get install openssh-server
- to be able to connect to pinphone e.g from PC, transfer files etc.
- can this be installed and enabled by default?

Isn't that a security risk? People may not be aware that a ssh-server is installed and that in combination with a default user/password.

Don't get me wrong, I've installed openssh-server myself, but I've altered /etc/ssh/sshd_config so I can only log in with key-based authentication.  

TIP, you can install https://gitlab.com/a-wai/debos-pinephone on your PC and add the extra packages you want to image.yaml and create an image yourself. That's what I do, works great.