Run Linux+X on phone or android tablet (no root needed)

[davids45]

G'day,

I'm looking for advice regarding a Bauhn SphereB5 phone (Android version 4.2.2) now about 4 years old.
Its catalog specification was 16GB phone memory and today the phone 'settings' reports over 12GB 'Total space' and 'Available'.

However, its original un-smart set-up had limited the usable 'internal memory' to 1GB. With Google Play Store, etc., this now runs out very quickly, even though I have set the 32GB SD card to be the install location for added applications, videos, photos, and so on.

Whirlpool told me an updated update.img file would fix the phone's memory 1GB 'limit' but the phone now lacks support from Bauhn or Aldi, so no update.img file available.

I think all I need to do in 'Puppy' terms is to resize the phone internal memory partition with GParted from its 1GB to say 10GB?

Would GNURoot Debian allow this in some way? I briefly tried installing GNURoot Debian but ran out of memory! A second try could be more successful by removing stuff in 'Internal memory', if warranted.

Is this simple re-size 'solution' feasible, or is there an alternative for fixing this internal memory restriction (that doesn't involve buying a new, actually-'Smart' phone )?

Thanks for any advice.

Feeling un-smart myself,
David S.

[wiak]

Is this simple re-size 'solution' feasible, or is there an alternative for fixing this internal memory restriction (that doesn't involve buying a new, actually-'Smart' phone )?

This I really don't know, sorry, David. Seems unlikely this Debian app would prove to be a solution since it runs in userspace on the Android, which doesn't even need to be rooted. Not being rooted I doubt therefore the Debian OS would have sufficient rights to re-partition anything. Also, what you are looking for is more RAM is it not, whereas partitioning is to do with storage space? I'm left wondering what the 12GB available on your phone is exactly; is it actually possible RAM or just ROM or some kind of electrically re-programmable ROM, which would just be for storing programs and not RAM per se? Hopefully an Android OS expert will see your post and suggest any mechanism that might do what you want.

EDIT: Okay, so I checked the specs and re-read you post, David. The phone apparently has 1GB RAM, but 16GB internal 'memory' (meaning storage in this case). I realise now that your issue is simply that you want to be able to use that 16GB storage (that it is being somehow limited by the phones firmware). Again, I doubt the Debian OS can help here since will be limited to whatever the phone provides userland I expect. It is a bit odd how the phone reports 14 GB available but really only give 1 GB but alas I know nothing about Androids.

EDIT2: I think I understand the problem you describe now, though have no idea how you can re-partition the reserved Apps area:

http://www.stevesandroidguide.com/under ... d-storage/

This time the tablet is showing 3 partitions and not 2. They are: Reserved, Apps and Data.

On this older tablet part of the storage was reserved for Apps and App data only . This is usually called Internal storage but sometimes the term photo storage is used.

The other part is for user data e.g.photos etc which is often called SD storage.

The problem with this arrangement is that if the Apps partition becomes full you can’t install any new Apps even though the data partition had lots of space.

wiak

[davids45]

G'day wiak,

Thanks for your replies and comments.

Your interpretation of my phone problem is what I understand to be 'wrong' with the phone - the link you posted is a very good explanation, if a bit depressing as the page-writer also doesn't know how to fix this Andoid issue.

At least, if I see a new 'special offer' on a so-called Smart Android Phone (or Tablet), I'll know what to check straightaway, rather than four years later .

David S.

[wiak]

I've been temporarily distracted. There is a newer kid on the Linux on non-rooted Android front:

https://userland.tech/

Get it from Google Playstore. It's opensource and on github.

Seems very similar to GNURoot Debian. Indeed so similar I suspect main developer of GNURoot Debian may be involved. I read somewhere that GNURoot Debian is no longer supported anyway and wouldn't work on newer Android OS (ver 8+) so its developer said to use userLAnd instead. I'm trying it now on my 8in Android tab and seems fine and similar keys and other facilities to GNURoot Debian. I'm installing JWM via apt (per my GNURoot Debian notes earlier in this thread to see if that works the same (not finished doing it yet).

One advantage is that this uses Debian Stretch whereas the GNURoot Debian I installed was Debian Jessie. Apparently there is also Ubuntu (or coming) - I guess that will be Bionic.

Reason I'm interested in this is that I'm often out cycling to local cafe and can't be bothered taking my laptop but would like to do some GTK-related development work whilst drinking my coffee. Hoping I can set up development environment on this... Also want to compile gtkwialog on this.

Which reminds me, I have to put this aside so I can get my local gtkwialog repo up-to-date so I can push latest/recent source code changes I made for version 0.8.7.

wiak

EDIT: Proving a bit flaky so far (hanging as I try to sudo apt install geany). Oh well, it is under new development; I think I'll stick with GNURoot Debian for now...

[wiak]

Hmmm... can't install GNURoot Debian any more. App claims it is broken and tells me to install userLAnd instead. Despit userLAnd being opensource I have a feeling that monetization must be in the dev plans - seems to check back home everytime I start a new userLAnd session. GNURoot Debian didn't have any catches - I'm disappointed so far.

EDIT: Did manage to re-install GNURoot Debian on my Android ver 6 tablet, but I think that won't be possible for much longer so probably not worth the bother. Anyway, I've re-installed GNURoot Debian, and also put build-essentials and lots of other parts of build system on it - will do just now for testing GTK+ progs including gtkwialog armv71 cpu compile. Good thing is, GNURoot Debian doesn't keep checking/downloading updates which UserLAnd seems to do. Ah... but waste of time so far - GNURoot Debian isn't letting me chmod +x on files... so I can't do much development in that case!
EDIT: sdcard mounted with noexec flag on Android - though I didn't realise I had cloned repo to sdcard... Trying:

sh autogen.sh #but bit limited this, to say the least...

wiak

[wiak]

Following on from my above post...

Despite my doubts, I persevered, and have now successfully compiled latest gtkwialog 0.8.7 on my Android 6 tablet in GNURoot Debian.

I tarred up my Gtkwialog git repo on my PC, emailed it to myself, and then on Android 6 tablet opened the email and downloaded the tar.gz file to / on my GNURoot debian system. I untarred it there with tar xzvf ....tar.gz and doing it that way the necessary execute permissions on the various build scripts were preserved and all worked...

I don't know why starting in GNURoot debian in / dir and issuing git clone command results in a clone that doesn't have exec perms on these scripts... oh well - works the way I'm doing it anyway and gtkwialog 0.8.7 working fine on Android GNURoot Debian (EDIT: also now have wiagit running on it)... So can be useful afterall.

wiak

[wiak]

Well, GNURoot Debian no longer being maintained.

But just installed UserLAnd from Google playstore and running Ubuntu Bionic version on it via auto-installed X and vnc. Works just like GNURoot Debian once it is up and running. dpkg/apt working fine so can add what you like.

I'm using it to run cherrytree on my android phone (apart from using it as Linux plaything). Better on android tablet though, since bigger screen...

You can alternatively do a lot of the same yourself by first installing Termux program and then PRoot for android and then X and vnc stuff etc, but that involves a fair bit of knowledge and work (especially to get Debian with dpkg/apt etc). I think UserLAnd maybe uses a modified version of Termux underneath but I have to look into that more. An alternative to UserLAnd is AnLinux, which I'm going to also try out soon (it needs Termux installed first).

My current phone is a 1GB RAM cheapo vodaphone smartprime with android ver 5.0.2 on it, but previous experiment showed similar working on even earlier 512MB RAM android 4.2.2 phone okay (with external SD card - I'm using 16GB SDcard but I don't know enough about android to find where everything is stored or how much space it is taking up). My phone is default config (I have NOT rooted it).

I imagine it could be possible to get FatDog running on phone via one of these, but not sure how and I'm unlikely to try.

EDIT: But again the window manager used by default is twm... and on small screen I hate that really. So in xterm I entered:

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sudo apt update
sudo apt install jwm

But problem is, I don't know how window manager is getting started up in this case. Seems to be using Xsession and I looked in /etc/X11 but couldn't find how to change from twm to newly installed jwm (found no config for it in /home/user_dir or in /root for that matter). Anyway, for now, found a quick way to do manually since I discovered from process list that program /usr/bin/x-window-manager is what starts twm (actually that's a symlink to /etc/alternatives...). I hoped it was a script but it's a binary exec. So what I did is simply kill off twm with command:

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pkill x-window-manager

and then started jwm with:

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jwm &

Today, above pkill didn't work for me, so had to find the pid of x-window-manager and kill -9 it:

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sudo ps aux | grep x-window-manager

Maybe someone will find 'correct' more permanent way...?

Anyway, working fine as stands for my simple need.

wiak

EDIT: UserLAnd working well. The alternative, AnLinux, however, proved problematic for me in my attempt to install it, so for now I have given up on that one.

[rufwoof]

I see some run gopher on their phone, seems like a good pairing for potential very lightweight load. X is for Web 2'ers, that is primarily funded by advertisers and designed to maximise personal profiling. Web 1 is more Unix philosophy ... everything is a (text) 'file'. When your phones geolocation starts triggering public advertisements that are tuned to your presence then its all too much like potential subliminal messaging/brainwashing for my liking.
.
.
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Did you notice the subliminal 'vote for trump' in the above text for instance?