PINE64 - PineNote Software

http://pinenote.mweigand.net/repo_pn_stable Public Key is not available

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 16:47:40 +0000

Hello, I just ran`sudo apt update`via ssh on my V2 PineNote and I'm receiving the following warning

Warning: An error occurred during the signature verification. The repository is not updated and the previous index files will be used. GPG error: http://pinenote.mweigand.net/repo_pn_stable trixie InRelease: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY E0B6906147A709C6

Problems With Extensions After Upgrading

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 06:03:43 +0000

So, I bought myself a PineNote like a month ago (my device is a batch 2, I think), and I'm having some issues with the Pinenote Helper extension and Maximized by default extension.

I recently used a script https://git.sr.ht/~diederik/pinenote-bat...all-fixes/ to upgrade my system (heads up to people, using sudo apt upgrade seems to put the device in a boot loop. I had to re-flash the OS). I don't know if its the script or the upgrades themselves that did this, but the PineNote Helper extension and the Maximized by default extension appear to be completely broken after upgrading. They each give separate warnings inside of the Extension Manager. I tried re-installing the Pinenote Helper extension, but it only added back the display refresh button and nothing else.

Pinenote Helper error:

Quote:An error has occurred in this extension. This could cause issues elsewhere in the system. It is recommended to turn the extension off until the error is resolved.

Error details: Gio.DBusError:
GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.UknownMethod:
Unknown method SetNoOffScreen

Maximized by default extension:

Quote:The installed version of this extension (1.3.1+pn) is incompatible with the current version of GNOME (48.4). The extension has been disabled.

For the Maximized by default extension error, I'm guessing I have to wait until it supports GNOME 48.4 and then upgrade my system again since I probably want the latest system updates possible at the moment. But maybe there's some other solution?

Anyways, for the Pinenote Helper extension error, I'm at a bit of a dead end. I did find this https://github.com/PNDeb/pinenote-gnome-.../issues/24, in which someone fixes the same issue I'm having by recompiling the PineNote DBUS Service. Apparently a change was made in the Pinenote Helper extension, creating a problem of some kind with the DBUS Service, which is fixed in the latest version of the DBUS Service. Only problem is, I barley know what a DBus is, much less how to recompile one. I've checked some other forum posts, but I can't find any other solutions or other posts talking about this issue. I tend to overlook things, so please let me know if some other post has already fixed this problem.

I'm new to Pine64 and relatively new to Linux as a whole, so excessive amounts of detail would be appreciated so I can research and learn more!

Quill OS for the PineNote

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 21:55:06 +0000

Quill OS is now available for the PineNote in a "working" state

I don't think it's worth repeating myself with what I have written on github, so here are some links:
- An a bit outdated demo: https://github.com/PorQ-Pine/docs/blob/m...ic/demo.md
- Explanation of what I'm even talking about: https://github.com/PorQ-Pine/docs/tree/main/public
- Entry repo: https://github.com/PorQ-Pine/quillstrap?...me-ov-file
- Technical explanation of Quill OS (A cool graph ): https://github.com/PorQ-Pine/docs/tree/m.../technical

We are looking for people to guide them to install it and write the installation steps along the way, so if you are interested, contact us in our discord server or in the official #pinenote

Also of course some more disclaimers:
1. Quill on pinenote is in its early days, there are many issues and minor problems like no rotation, no sleep (sleep drains the battery a lot anyway, so i did not care to add it)
2. The installation, while we used it, could have problems along the way, cant promise it would be painless, so maybe a few days without a working pinenote is possible

If you have questions, feel free to ask them here

Simulating a touch through the command line

Fri, 03 Oct 2025 16:50:42 +0000

Hi all,

First time poster! Excited to be here!

I'm working on a project where my pine note is networked to my computer. I want to control software on my pinenote that does *not* have command line access, from my computer.

Seems the best way to do this is to simulate a touch on the pinenote.

Anyone know how to do this?

Thanks for reading my query!

- BabyGNU

Wifi 5Ghz Issue

Thu, 18 Sep 2025 00:36:33 +0000

New Pinenote user here, running on Debian Trixie. I've read the recent blog post explaining the issues with Wifi using 5Ghz, and indeed I can't connect my Pinenote to my home network on that frequency.

The blog post explains 2 workarounds, the first of which involves changing your network to only use specific bands. I'm not particularly interested in that option as it won't work on any other networks when I'm away from home and I don't want to jeopardize performance to my other devices.

What's not clear to me is if there's any action I can take to try out the second workaround listed there. It sounds like a more robust way to solve the issue, but the blog post doesn't seem to contain any instructions or links to instructions for how to actually do it.

booting is looping

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 04:54:08 +0000

Hi

After

Quote:- deleting symlink /lib64
- apt update ; apt upgrade
- reboot

the pinenote is "booting..." and flashing the screen every 3-4 seconds and nothing else is happening.

Any ideas ?

Best and thanks

/Jan

* /lib64 is a symbolic link and not pointing at usr/lib64 exactly.

Sat, 26 Jul 2025 15:45:32 +0000

Hi

I see that others have had this issue, but it is not clear to me if there is any solution or bypass ?

Quote:apt upgrade

Preparing to unpack .../base-files_13.8_arm64.deb ...
******************************************************************************
*
* The base-files package cannot be installed because
* /lib64 is a symbolic link and not pointing at usr/lib64 exactly.
..
Error: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Best and thanks

/Jan

Invalid Signature by m-weigand

Fri, 25 Jul 2025 11:26:48 +0000

Hello, first time user, so I already made an error, posted first in the wrong place. But kindly put me on the right path.

The UI in settings does not seem to work, because the packages to be updated are always the same.

Particularly firmware is brcm80211 20240709 and it seems it expects to be updated to 20250410 even if it does not work

So I tried to update using the terminal
sudo apt update

, but I get an error regarding invalid signature: EXPKEYSIG 447D9EBF6B6F552D Maximilian Weigang

kindly wrote the following;

Quote:If you do a web search on apt EXPKEYSIG you can find advice on fixing it, e.g.
https://tecadmin.net/expired-key-expkeysig-with-apt/

Basically, your particular install has an old key and you need to get the new one.

But the relevant key is not available on the server to which that page points.

I also tried Ubuntu keyserver, but the key is not there.

So perhaps that key does not exists and the only way to get updates is to waive GPG security and modify the repository line as follows

Code:
deb [trusted=yes] http://deb.debian.org/debian trixie main contrib non-free non-free-firmware

But before doing that I would like to know if others had the same issue.

Best

Page turner for PineNote (Airturn, Joyo JSP-01) - for sheet music (using KOReader)

Fri, 09 May 2025 15:10:04 +0000

Hi musicians (or speakers, or...)

this is mostly a quick note for those who may think about getting such a gadget for playing sheet music.

Although the PineNote may be a little to small it works for lyrics and chord sheets (I tweak the pages to get more on one screen).

And it's good to have the backlight, e.g. for a dark stage. Unfortunately I find the flickering of the backlight distracting. But in the lower positions (not at 100% backlight) it works.

The PineNote (Debian) with KOReader works perfectly fine with following page turners:

- Airturn PED 500 https://www.thomann.co.uk/airturn_ped_500.htm

- Airturn BT500S-2 https://www.thomann.co.uk/airturn_bt500s_2.htm

- Joyo JSP-01 https://www.thomann.co.uk/joyo_jsp_01_pa..._pedal.htm

I had them all and they are connecting fine and instantly via bluetooth with the PN.

Page turning works out of the box with all of them in KOReader (Attention: it starts in "scrolling" mode, but you most likely want the "page flipping" mode).

I didn't like the PED500 - it's very compact, usb-c, but the haptic feedback wasn't good for me.

The Airturn BT500S and JSP-01 both are nice, but have their pros/cons:

Airturn BT500S:

- Made in USA (might be a pro argument?!)

- expensive (~80Euro)

- no USB-C (that was the main reason I decided against it. It has a round power jack, like you would find in a E-Guitar pedal case)

- has a plastic shell, but still looks/feels nice and sturdy

- the switches have a good feedback - like those of a normal effect pedal

- switching of page turner mode works by holding a button. Not obvious at first, but it works.

JSP-01:

- I decided for this one because of the price (<30Euro), the surprisingly good quality and USB-C power

- Made in China (might be a con?!)

- although it's all plastic it feels well manufactured

- the feedback of the plastic flaps is good enough

- changing the mode is easy and clear

But as I said they both work well with KOReader:

- in a multi-page document (and if you are in page-flipping mode) the right switch flips to the next and the left switch flips to the previous page.

- If you configure KOReader to go to the next file at the end of the document, you can click through a whole set of songs/documents if the filenames are numbered in a specific order (I tried with collections, but I wasn't able to find "go to next file in collection" or something like it.)

- the only things that doesn't work (or at least I didn't find out how) is to go back to the previous documents. (I put the "go back" function in one edge of the screen and configured it to go to the last position. Thats a workaround to at least go back to the previous song in case it's needed. But it doesn't work with the left pedal and you can only "go back" to the "last used" document - it will not cycle back to the first document in your set list)

App-wise: Making notes is not completely straightforward. Okular can be used as a workaround, to make an edit fast. But Okular annotations may be cropped/cut off by KOReader.

A solid workflow was:

- I put the original PDF-files in one folder (together with the original odt files from which I exported the PDFs with libreoffice)

- Editing them with Xournalpp and:

- saving the Xournalpp files in a separate xopp folder

- I export the annotated PDF files in a separate folder where I number the filenames like they occur on the setlist

If anyone has a more convenient approach/idea on how to setup documents, or other apps to use - I'd be glad to read about it.

adios

Password reset via u-boot (init=/bin/sh) possible?

Wed, 19 Mar 2025 07:32:47 +0000

Hello everyone,

first I want to phrase the question:
Is it possible to somehow reset the userpassword via setting a boot parameter in uboot to drop into a root shell (without disk encryption this should (?!) be possible in linux via the init=/bin/sh "trick"). I connected via UART and to my pinenote and tried some combinations, setting the bootcmd and others (see https://isc.sans.edu/forums/diary/Resett...ers/28564/).

now the why:

What was bugging me, since I have the pinenote for 2-3 weeks now, is that it crash-reboots at least once in a using session (no heavy actions done (?!): a bit browsing and configuring koreader, xournaling some pdfs, and stuff). I thought, this is because the system is not meant to be stable by now (as far as I understood what I read) and wasn't yet able to investigate further

Now 2 days ago I apt-upgraded via terminal and the update seemed relatively big (but it was NOT my first time running the os update). The screen froze at 55% - no reaction. I was already fearful because it happened after the downloading/unpacking part and still I powercycled it after 1-2 hours. It didn't boot anymore (it showed a dark version of the image with the squares and it said "booting ...").

I connected UART (thanks so much for delivering the dongle with it!!) and was presented a login.
Ok, what was my root password again? I've set it up a week ago and used it some times. But although I'm 98% sure that I got it right, I was not able to log in.
Ok, I created another user with sudo permissions and because of the many reboots of the pinenote I had to put it in very frequently, so I'm 99,999% sure that I have it right (still there was a slight uncertainty, because the password is somehow bound to the layout of the on-screen-keyboard) - NO, not able to login.
Ok, what was the password of ther originals "user" ... yeah, I'm able to log in ... BUT ... as I created another user I removed sudo group from "user" -.-
Now I'm confused even more - I can see that the user I created really exists in /etc/passwd ... so once again my reality is questioned - why wasn't I able to login?
Did I tried to much and some new PAM restriction is active by default in Trixie? Seems not so. But I remembered the workaround of dropping to a root shell in grub, maybe/hopefully this also works here? But I'm not very proficient with uboot and UART yet.
Alternatively: can I copy the bootmenu file from the pine, change it and put it back?
Maybe there is an even easier option I didn't think of yet, before I have to flash it(?!)

postmarketOS / sxmo

Sun, 16 Mar 2025 22:40:37 +0000

is anyone successfully running postmarketOS on a Pine Note?
if yes, do you think i could run sxmo on it (sway, wayland?)

SSH over USB

Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:42:26 +0000

Is it possible to ssh over USB? I found this very useful with the remarkable 2 since it avoids having to deal with dynamic IP addresses etc. and you can use tools like rsync which don't seem to play nicely with a USB storage mounting.

Install SIgnal messenger?

Sat, 15 Feb 2025 19:31:13 +0000

Any ideas about how one might install the Signal messenger app on the Pine Note?

Unable to find a working keepass app

Sat, 01 Feb 2025 20:53:20 +0000

I'm about a week in with my PineNote and mostly really enjoying it, figuring out one little issue at a time. But one thing has remained confounding: I can't get the on-screen keyboard to work with KeePass XC.

My usual go-to is KeePassXC. However, when I open it on the PineNote, I can't get the keyboard to come up to enter my password. I can use it with a Bluetooth keyboard, but not without that. I imagine this is because it isn't GNOME-native enough (whatever the terminology is). But is there a trick to get XC working? This would be great as it would integrate with the browser.

Thanks in advance for any help!

does the Joplin note taking app work on the PineNote?

Thu, 23 Jan 2025 18:59:45 +0000

Hello dear PineNote users,

has anyone tried using Joplin on the PineNote yet? Joplin has a built in drawing function and I am curious on how that works with the stylus and the overall experience of Joplin on the PineNote.

Best regards,

Don