Messages

1

Cosmo Communicator - General Discussion / Re: Camera

« on: May 10, 2022, 05:38:04 pm »

I have the impression, that my post #147 caused some wrong emotions.

It was definitively not my intention to complain about any GCam dependencies. I did not know that GCam depends on the Google Play Services. I just wanted to inform other people about this "finding". Because I think, that I am not the only one, who replaced Google Play Services with microG. And when the "microG Services Core" app can disappear on my Cosmo for unknown reasons, it can happen on other devices too. It took me 2 or 3 hours to find the solution.
I thought, my finding may be helpful for somebody sometimes and save him or her some time.

@shuntcap
I really appreciate your GCam mod. Thank you very much, that you provided it.
It was not my intention to blame you for not removing the GCam dependencies.
I am really sorry, if my post caused this wrong impression and want to apologize.

Onkel Otto

2

Cosmo Communicator - General Discussion / Re: Camera

« on: April 06, 2022, 06:37:15 pm »

Hello Everybody,

I was am using the "gcam_for_cosmo_v4.apk" published by shuntcap in post #123 since its release on my COSMO without any problems.

Today i realized, that the app does not start anymore. When I try to start it, a message is shown "camera was closed".
I can tap on "App-Information" or an "Close App", but this does not provide any solution.

I reinstalled the GCam app - no change.

The original COSMO camera app is working and takes pictures.

I did some web search and found the "solution" here:
https://github.com/lukaspieper/Gcam-Services-Provider

"This app "simulates" the Google Play Services that the Google Camera app (Gcam) requires, allowing the camera app to be used on devices without Google Play Services.

Comparison: microG
microG is a open source re-implementation of the Google Play Services (client side). Among other things, signature spoofing is used to achieve this goal. In comparison, this app only aims to get Gcam running without Play Services. Therefore this app does not need any security compromising hacks or permissions (no Internet access, no storage access and of course no root access)."

I have completely removed Google Play Services from my Cosmo and replaced it with microG.
But when I checked my Cosmo now after reading on the mentioned github page, I realized, that the "microG Services Core" app was missing. It was gone. I have no idea, why.

I reinstalled "microG Services Core" and shuntcap's GCam port was working again.


I did not know, that the GCam app requires Google Play Services.

3

Cosmo Communicator - Hardware / Re: Flickering Screen ON New Cosmo

« on: March 30, 2022, 08:06:26 pm »

Hi Alexis80,

I had the same issue with my Cosmo.
After several emails I could convince the Planet Support, that this is a warranty case. The repair did not cost me something. Just the shipping to UK did cost me money.
But the really bad experience was, that the repair took almost 10 month.
Because I shipped the Cosmo in February 2020. Planet told me, they have to wait for spare parts. In March 2020 we got the Covid lock down in Europe. Finally I got my Cosmo back in October 2020. 

Shit happens - said Forrest Gump.  :'(

Since that time I use the Cosmo every day. It is working reliably enough for me to be used daily. In summary I am happy with it.

4

Cosmo Communicator - Android / Re: Update Magisk v22.0 to v22.1 on rooted Android v25

« on: May 17, 2021, 06:10:32 pm »

Just rename the magisk  .img to .zip and flash with twrp. the restart fails going to fastboot first, but another off / on brings you to the boot loader as usual. no problems at all.

I also tried to install Magisk this way. But it was installed in the normal Android partition. I did not find any way to install it to the rooted Android Partition with TWRP.

oida, how did you manage to install Magisk to the rooted Android partition with TWRP?

Have you locked the bootloader of your Cosmo?
If not you have probably installed Magisk into the normal Android partition. With open bootloader it does not matter. The Cosmo will boot and start Android. You just have rooted your "Normal Android" this way - assuming, that you used Planets way of rooting.

But with a locked bootloader it will show a message "Your device failed verification and will not work properly. You have to unlock the bootloader" or similar.
The Cosmo could not boot the "Normal Android" anymore. It could still boot the rooted Android, but Magisk was not updated in this partition.

The benefit of Planet Computers rooting solution is, that the device can have a locked bootloader plus a rooted Android. Planet has created a boot menu to choose between several boot options including "Normal Android" (= not rooted) and "rooted Android".
The disadvantage is, that i.e., updating Magisk requires some attention.

5

Cosmo Communicator - Android / Update Magisk v22.0 to v22.1 on rooted Android v25

« on: April 11, 2021, 08:00:05 pm »

I had managed, to install rooted Android from Planet following their instructions given here:
https://support.planetcom.co.uk/index.php/Rooted_Android_For_Cosmo
After installation of the rooted Android v25 the update of Magisk to version 22.0 also worked.

Today Magisk "told me", that an update to v22.1 is available.
I tapped on "Install" for the App itself in the Magisk Manager App. That worked well and Magisk on my Cosmo showed version 22.1 for the Magisk app.
Then I tapped "Install" for Magisk (the upper "Install).

This failed. At the required reboot the Cosmo showed a message like "Your device failed verification and will not work properly. You have to unlock the bootloader".
I had decided to install the Planet version of the rooted Android, because it does not require to unlock the bootloader.

After some searching and some thinking it became kind of obvious for me, that the Magisk Manager has modified the "normal boot.img" and not the rooted one. I think, this happened, because the rooted boot image is installed in partition 41 - labeled "EMPTY_NORMAL_BOOT_3" before the installation of the rooted boot image and renamed to "ROOTED_ANDROID" by the Planet recovery installer.

My way to fix the issue:
I restored the boot.img from a TWRP backup I had created before.
Reboot - the message regarding "verification / unlock bootloader" was gone.

I booted into the rooted Android. Luckily, this also worked.
Then I copied the "root-boot.img" from the "cosmo-customos-installer" folder on the SD card to /storage/emulated/0/download
I was using the "TotalCommander" file manager app, but this could have been done with every other file manager.
I opened the Magisk Manager and tapped on "Install" for Magisk (the upper "Install).
On the next page I left both checkboxes checked. I don't know, if the first one (Forced ...) is mandatory or important for the following task. But the second checkbox for "Recovery Mode" must be checked.
Then I tapped on "Next Step".
This opened the next section in Magisk Manager where I could choose "Select and Patch a File".
This immediately opened the Magisk file manager with the focus in the download folder. I tapped on the "root-boot.img" file and then on "Los geht's". I have the German localization of Magisk. In the English version this may be something like "go on" or "Do it".

Magisk Manager was patching the selected "root-boot.img".
The progress was shown in a text console.
The final message was:
Output file is written to
 /storage/emulated/0/Download/magisk_patched-22100_wvwcD.img 

I rebooted the Cosmo to rooted Android.
With the file manager (TotalCommander) I deleted "root-boot.img" in the "cosmo-customos-installer" folder on the SD card
Then I copied "magisk_patched-22100_wvwcD.img" to the the "cosmo-customos-installer" folder on the SD card and renamed it to "root-boot.img"
Next I rebooted to the Planet recovery.
There I selected
- Install Custom OS on your Cosmo
- Install Rooted Android for Firmware v25
- I selected "ROOTED_ANDROID" as destination
- Reboot system now

Again I booted the Cosmo to rooted Android.
It worked perfectly.
I opened the Magisk Manager app - and - voila - Magisk and the App were both on version 22.1.

I found the necessary background information on this site:
https://topjohnwu.github.io/Magisk/install.html#boot-image-patching

And I would be happy, if my text will help somebody to update Magisk on a rooted Cosmo.

6

Cosmo Communicator - Android / Re: New firmware released and CODI version.

« on: April 04, 2021, 05:51:51 pm »

With this firmware v25 I finally decided to change to Planets rooted image.
One reason is, that their rooted image is signed and does not require an unlocked bootloader.

The other reason is, that PC removed the need to create a 30 GB Linux partition with firmware v25.
This was announced on Planets support page "https://support.planetcom.co.uk/index.php/Rooted_Android_For_Cosmo" with this note:
"

Note that in recent firmwares you will also have the option to keep all the storage for Android while allowing the installation of TWRP and rooted Android, which is useful if you want to have a rooted Android without using Linux.

"

Their recovery got a new entry in [Change the partition table of your COSMO]:
[Reserve most of the storage for Android (allow TWRP and rooted Android)]
See attached screenshot "01 Reserve most of the storage for Android.jpg"

The output of this command shows that partitions 38, 41, 42, 43 and 44 will be created.
See attached screenshot "02 Create partitons.jpg"


A few commands later the partitions 38, 41, 42 were renamed to
EMPTY_RECOVERY_BOOT_2
EMPTY_NORMAL_BOOT_3
EMPTY_NORMAL_BOOT_4
See attached screenshot "03 Rename Partitions.jpg"


As far as I understand the numbers in the mkpart command the sizes of the partitions 38, 41 and 43 are almost 64 MByte and partition 42 is exactly 64 MByte in size.
Partition 43 has got the name [linux].
As far as I understand this, there is still an unused partition for Linux. It is just not 30 GB in size but only 64 MB.
Is my understanding correct regarding this?

But I don't understand the size of partition 44 - userdata.
According to the mkpart command this partition has a size of almost 223 GByte. But the COSMO has just 128 GByte of internal storage.
Where is my mistake?
 

7

Cosmo Communicator - Linux / Re: Default Boot Partition

« on: April 04, 2021, 04:17:39 pm »

With firmware v25 PC has implemented the possibility to set the default boot partition.

Information on how to do this can be found here:
https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?topic=36513.0