Messages

1

Gemini PDA - Linux / Kali not booting again

« on: February 06, 2020, 08:26:15 am »

Many thanks Re4son,

I will look forward to being able to use Kali again on the Gemini.

2

Gemini PDA - Linux / Kali not booting again

« on: December 18, 2019, 10:43:04 pm »

Sorry to break it to you but Kali is more or less unusable These days. Especially since the new libc-bin upgrade uninstalls a lot of the Xserver-xorg-hwcomposer package which is the video drivers on the Gemini. Also installing Libreoffice does not work since it depends on the newer version of libc as well. It is sad since I quite liked Kali on the device. If you go to the Kali Linux ARM builds section you will notice that there is no download image for the latest Kali version on the Gemini. If you are desperate to use Linux it is possible to get Debian stretch or buster running. I have buster running on mine. However it requires a decent amount of troubleshooting to get working and yeah Planet didn't really put much effort into actually supporting Linux on the device. It more feels like a device that is capable of running Linux rather than a device that natively supports it.

3

Gemini PDA - Linux / Debian buster initramfs-tools-halium kernel file too large.

« on: October 27, 2019, 11:09:43 am »

Greetings,

After Kali 2019.3 became more or less unusable on the Gemini.
I decided to try out gemian,
I found the software in debian stretch to be somewhat lacking. so (after a long session of trial and error) more or less gotten buster to run on the device pretty well.
First thing I did was install the gemian buster libc2.28 from the gemian buster repo and then:
I followed the instructions posted here https://github.com/gemian/gemini-keyboard-a...ki/DebianBuster by installing libglvnd-dev and moving the libs out of the way.
I also ran the update-alternatives command from the same page.
update-alternatives --set aarch64-linux-gnu_egl_conf /usr/lib/aarch64-linux-gnu/libhybris-egl/ld.so.conf after ran
sudo ldconfig and worked like a charm.

For anyone else that wants to run buster, I also needed to upgrade the x11-xkb-utils package or else the xserver would fail with illegal keycodes.

I also spent some time removing libs related to plasma kde as well as the majority of libreoffice packages before installing the buster libreoffice.
lxqt also conflicted but I don't use lxqt so I just removed it anyway.

However I upgraded the initramfs-tools-halium to the latest version from the gemian buster repo and first it gave an error saying /etc/ld.conf.so.d/aarch64-linux-gnu_EGL.conf no such file or directory. I fixed that by running sudo cp /usr/lib/aarch64-linux-gnu/libhybris-egl/ld.so.conf /etc/ld.so.conf/aarch64-linux-gnu_EGL.conf (I know this may not be the ideal way to solve the problem, just a workaround.) now the error is no longer there.

But after the kernel image is built it is too large for the partition.  I should mention I also get a depmod error from a missing gemini.cpio.gz supposed to be located in /lib/modules, but that's not relevant to my problem.

When i run the dd command to /dev/disk/by-partlabel/boot2 dd complains that it has run out of space on the disk. When running sudo fdisk -l the partition size for /dev/mmcblk0p30 (where the linux kernel boot2 is located) says it is 16M the kernel file is 21M.

So basically is it possible to either reduce the kernel file size or resize the /dev/mmcblk0p30 partition. (It may be possible to edit the scatter file start addresses and finish addersses but I don't want to do that without knowing what I am doing.) If anything it might be a good idea to allow for more space on this partition in future as the kernel can simply end up too large to be flashed.

For now I have simply reflashed the original kernel that came with the firmware using a download only on the boot2 partition using the flash tool. but it cannot load kernel modules.

Maybe later I will try recompiling the kernel from source on the gemini with modules enabled at some point.

4

Gemini PDA - Linux / Kali 2019.3 upgrade to libc-bin uninstalls hwcomposer driver and libhybris

« on: September 28, 2019, 06:46:13 am »

Hey Guys

The current version of Kali has been updated to 2019.3 and because of an update to libc-bin to 2.29.1, a lot of packages under Kali on gemini now say that they will remove things like libhybris and xserver-xorg-video-hwcomposer driver.

Packages that are essential for Kali to run on the gemini.
Also a few other packages in the gemian buster repo that are essential currently to get audio to work under Kali.

Now attempting an install of a lot of packages such as libreoffice or wireshark will attempt the new libc-bin upgrade resulting in a lot of them being currently being uninstallable via apt-get.

I have attached a screen shot showing this.

Hopefully it can be fixed soon.

5

Gemini PDA - Linux / Linux not booting after upgrade to lxc-android package

« on: May 17, 2019, 07:54:32 pm »

I also don't use android on this device and haven't installed any updates for it.

6

Gemini PDA - Linux / Linux not booting after upgrade to lxc-android package

« on: May 17, 2019, 07:41:08 pm »

I am using the android-kali image from the kali website.

so my kali is boot 2. (I hold the silver button down after vibrating to get into kali.)

I should mention I swapped the 3.18.41kali+ kernel for the one located in this blog post.

https://www.mygnu.de/2019/03/modular-linux-...h-cutpaste-fix/

so my kernel is 3.18.41+ which differs to the 3.18.41kali+ kernel.

I am using the modules from the same blog post as well.

I used the flashing tool to flash the kernel, as flashing manually using the dd command did not seem to work at all under kali. (After bootloader Linux crashes and then it just restarts and boots the default android instead.)

I also used the 5GB to android 50GB to Linux scatter file from here:

https://github.com/gemian/gemini-keyboard-apps/wiki/Flashing

I might be wrong in what I think you mean by firmware but I have the firmware-atheros, firmware-libertas, firmware-misc-nonfree, firmware-ralink and firmware-realtek packages installed.

Sorry if that is unhelpful.

my version of kali is of course 2019.1 as specified on the official kali website.

7

Gemini PDA - Linux / Linux not booting after upgrade to lxc-android package

« on: May 14, 2019, 10:09:00 am »

The xserver-xorg-video-hwcomposer package also needs to be held back as it turns the screen sideways and messes up the mouse orientation.

8

Gemini PDA - Linux / Linux not booting after upgrade to lxc-android package

« on: May 14, 2019, 08:23:25 am »

I am just posting this to let other people know.
The kali-gem repository by re4son kernel received an update to the lxc-android package.
After I upgraded to this new version. (I update and upgrade as often as possible.)

Linux just became unbootable I could not ssh in even over USB cable. So I have just given up and reflashed.

Luckily (due to the amount of times I have had to reflash) I have written a bash script that more or less restores my system to its default. With only a few settings here and there needing to be tweaked via a GUI.

Linux did seem to boot correctly, I know this because I set up a cron job to change the brightness to 5% on system boot. Which did in fact work.

I was planning on using the logcat tool to see if I could fix the problem over ssh.

I don't really know how this problem can be solved but for now I am just going to hold the package back.

9

Gemini PDA - Linux / No audio under Kali 2019.1

« on: May 06, 2019, 05:11:08 am »

Afterwards I would comment out the repo again obviously.

10

Gemini PDA - Linux / No audio under Kali 2019.1

« on: May 06, 2019, 05:10:06 am »

Hopefully the last time I need to post about this.

The pulseaudio from the buster repo will also install libubuntu-application-api3 and ubuntu-application-api3-test. When starting pulseaudio it will complain that there is no sensor detected and will halt the thread. To fix this I simply installed ubuntu-application-api3-examples from the buster repo and it should stop complaining.

11

Gemini PDA - Linux / No audio under Kali 2019.1

« on: April 25, 2019, 04:58:10 am »

I have also commented out the buster repo for now.

12

Gemini PDA - Linux / No audio under Kali 2019.1

« on: April 25, 2019, 04:56:50 am »

Got it.
ran sudo dpkg --purge xserver-xorg-video-hwcomposer
then reinstalled kali-gem version
sudo apt-get install -t kali-gem xserver-xorg-video-hwcomposer

13

Gemini PDA - Linux / No audio under Kali 2019.1

« on: April 25, 2019, 03:33:56 am »

After doing an apt full-upgrade my whole screen has turned sideways and the mouse orientation is wrong.

So I would say this is not reccomended.

Will try to see if I can fix.

14

Gemini PDA - Linux / No audio under Kali 2019.1

« on: April 24, 2019, 06:45:05 pm »

Fixed it simply changing the gemian think globally repo from stretch to buster and then installing the pulseaudio from that repo fixed it. Silly I didn't think to do this beforehand. But I was not aware that it actually had a buster version.

For anyone else who wants to fix this add this to your /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://gemian.thinkglobally.org/buster/ buster main

Then run sudo apt-get -t buster pulseaudio pulseaudio-module-droid

(If you have debian buster repo on your kali for whatever reason make sure you are getting the right versions of pulseaudio and pulseaudio-module-droid)

Happy to finally have audio under Kali.

15

Gemini PDA - Linux / No audio under Kali 2019.1

« on: April 23, 2019, 05:41:07 pm »

I see.
I understand the Kali repo (which contains the Kali-gem versions of both pulseaudio and pulseaudio-modules-droid) and kernel are maintained by re4son. After reading I attempted to see if I could build pulseaudio-modules-droid from source so far it has failed. It is asking for libpulse and pulsecore. It also asked me to add in a bunch of tab characters in one of the makefiles. I have given up for now.

It might be possible to ask re4son if he could help recompile the latest from source or something.

I am sure he is plenty busy however.

I read this link which explains it a little.
https://github.com/gemian/gemini-keyboard-a...ki/DebianBuster

Audio isn't essential to my use of this device, in fact I would probably continue using it just fine without.

But its nicer to have than to not have.

Thank you for your reply, at least it will probably be fixed at some point.