Focal and Waydroid news for Lenovo X605

muskist

@luksus
Thanks! I'll give it a try.

muskist

@luksus
Installed it and it booted!

How did you install waydroid? The old way:

sudo -s
mount -o remount,rw /
apt update
apt install waydroid -y
waydroid init

?

Luksus

@muskist no, waydroid is already installed.

just do sudo waydroid init or use the waydroid helper app.

muskist

@luksus
Thx!

muskist

@luksus
Sadly I get command not found when doing sudo waydroid init

Sure Waydroid is installed? Or is it not in $PATH?

Luksus

@muskist thats strange, are you sure you downloaded and installed the Focal build and not Xenial?
I am sure, that waydroid should be installed as default and accessible from the terminal.

muskist

@luksus said in Focal and Waydroid news for Lenovo X605:

@muskist thats strange, are you sure you downloaded and installed the Focal build and not Xenial?

Good question! I was able to install TELEports for 20.04 (v1.17.1) so I thought it's 20.04.

But UT Tweak Tool told me it's 16.04.7 LTS. And Waydroid didn't show up.

So I downloaded the artifacts.zip again from the link you gave above. I chose the latest one saying "passed" and "devel-flashable: archive". Maybe that's the wrong one?

EDIT: Just saw it: "devel-flashable:archive" != "devel-flashable-focal:archive" - sorry for the fuss! I'll try again.

Still wondering about TELEports v1.17.1 ...

Luksus

@muskist yes, the latest build is marked as canceled, but I just canceled the xenial build, you can still download the flashable-focal zip.

I know it is a little bit confusing.

muskist

@luksus
Unfortunately it doesn't work.

After flashing boot.img and ubuntu.img and doing fastboot reboot
the device gets stuck in a loop:

starting with vibration
showing the "Lenovo" screen for about 40 seconds
screen goes dark
starting with vibration
showing the "Lenovo" screen for about 40 seconds
...

I suppose you did it on a 3GB/32GB device?
Maybe it's the known unsuitability of the 2GB/16GB device.

I will stop trying unless you have another tip. But please don't waste your time on this! You're doing great work on the 3GB/32GB device (and I have one of those, too )!

muskist

@muskist said in Focal and Waydroid news for Lenovo X605:

@luksus
Unfortunately it doesn't work.
[...]

Success!
I flashed boot.img from artifacts.zip for 16.04 and ubuntu.img for 20.04. Device booted, starting 20.04 afterwards.
"Ein blindes Huhn findet auch mal ein Korn" - German saying, meaning "A blind hen also finds a grain of corn once in a while" (according to deepl.com).

Made my weekend.

Luksus

@muskist said in Focal and Waydroid news for Lenovo X605:

I flashed boot.img from artifacts.zip for 16.04 and ubuntu.img for 20.04. Device booted, starting 20.04 afterwards.

Interesting, since boot.img should be be the same for both...

@muskist said in Focal and Waydroid news for Lenovo X605:

"Ein blindes Huhn findet auch mal ein Korn"

Der war mir neu

muskist

@Luksus said in Focal and Waydroid news for Lenovo X605:

there are first working focal-builds for the X605.
Who want's to try it, needs to download the devel-flashable-focal:archive of the latest focal branch build, from this site:
https://gitlab.com/ubports/porting/community-ports/android9/lenovo-tab-m10-fhd/lenovo-x605/-/pipelines

Is it possible to try and flash the latest devel-flashable-focal:archive, e.g. #860314125 from "three months ago"?

Does it even make sense? You are constantly improving, I suppose.

Luksus

@muskist I just started a new build, so that you can try the latest devel focal build.

But I am currently not working on it, because I need the tablet in a usable state (with android).
So the only missing feature (I know of) is still the camera.

muskist

@Luksus Thanks, got it installed (after the usual boot problems). Everything seems to work fine (except camera).

gzagatti

@Luksus Thanks for putting this port together! What a tremendous effort!

First, I installed Ubuntu Touch with UBPorts installer. After installation, I realized that it came with Ubuntu Touch xenial which was slightly disappointing. Apart from this, the UBPorts installer was really helpful in showing me the ropes.

Next, I found your Git repo with the source code. I saw that there was a branch to build Ubuntu Touch focal. I managed to build the whole thing after a few issues. However, when it came to flashing the image to my device it didn't work. I managed to get past the Lenovo boot screen but my installation got stuck forever on the Ubuntu Touch loading screen.

Finally, I found this thread which saved my day. Thanks for sharing the link with the pre-built versions of Ubuntu Touch focal. I was then finally able to successfully install the OS on my device.

The last step of the installation is the trickiest one. Like @muskist, everything seems to work fine, except for the camera which was expected.

One last thing, I also faced the usual boot problems. I would like to understand the flashing steps on the README file better. The main branch includes the following line.

fastboot format:ext4 userdata

But the focal branch doesn't. Could you clarify whether this line should be added to focal.

After I followed the flash instruction of the focal README file, I couldn't boot. So, I restarted the device in bootmode and issued the following additional commands.

fastboot format:ext4 userdata
fastboot -w
fastboot flash boot out/boot.img

Then, there was a lot of turning on and off --- including in bootmode --- until it magically booted to Ubuntu Touch. I wish I could say what the right incantation of flash commands was, but I can't.

Luksus

@gzagatti thanks for your report.

I am not sure, why the format:ext4 command is not included in the focal branch, maybe I just forgot it.
At least, for UT to work, userdata should be formatted with ext4.
Beside this, I found that doing a wipe of userdata sometimes fixes the unreliable boot issue, at least for the first boot, thats why I included it in the readme.

It seems you have some development skills, if you managed to build it yourself.
It would be great to have somone who could help in resolving the remaining issues.

gzagatti

@Luksus thanks for your response.

I hope I can start helping once I get to know more about Ubuntu Touch. This is my first time using it, but I have some experience with Ubuntu.

I would like to report on my experience so far. After installing Focal, I spun a Libertine container up. First installation didn't complete successfully. I spun a second time successfully. To avoid the system from hibernating while spinning a new container you want to turn off the Lock when idle settings in the Settings > Battery.

However, I still had issues with the Libertine container as my X11 apps were not working (such as Firefox). I described the issue here.

I also experimented with Waydroid. Apps that require Waydroid take a while to launch. They do work, but the experience is a bit off because it is running from inside a container emulating an Android System.

I noted that everything is a bit slow in my Ubuntu Touch. For instance, when searching for updates the first time. It took about a good 10 minutes for the check to complete. Similarly, building a Libertine container and common apt commands inside of the container takes time as compared to my laptop. Do you think this is due to the limited Hardware or is it a Software issue?

I also had issues with apps suddenly quitting which is something that I don't experience on my regular Ubuntu. Again, I wonder whether this is a Hardware or Software issue?

Apart from the limitations above, I was having a very pleasant experience with Ubuntu Touch. That is, until yesterday when the tablet ran out of battery. I re-charged, but the tablet refused to reboot. I was left with re-formatting the disk by issuing the following commands using fastboot:

fastboot format:ext4 userdata
fastboot flash boot out/boot.img
fastboot reboot

I managed to reboot the tablet but it was reset to factory settings. I lost all my data (which was Ok because I am only using the tablet for entertainment). Do you have any idea what could have caused that? This kind of experience could be devastating for some users. It is also a pain in the ass to re-install everything.

Luksus

@gzagatti of course, if you format userdata all your data will be gone

So the solution would be, that you will find ways to get it to boot again, without formatting userdata.
There are already a lot of things the users tried, and seemed to work. Like booting to fastboot and issue the fastboot command fastboot continue or boot to recovery, mount system, reboot to recovery and then reboot the system.... and such things. Or just reflash boot and system...

But in the end, there is still no 100% working Workaround.

Yes, that's the great miracle of that device: "why doesn't it boot sometimes?".

I know one thing, which makes the device not to boot anymore very reliable: Mounting the rootfs writeable and not mounting it read-only again before rebooting.
But thats only a part of that issue, because in normal usage scenarios, the rootfs always stays read only.

gzagatti

@Luksus Thanks for your response. It does indeed look very strange. I will keep your techniques in mind and report again if I discover anything new.

pe3noATo2DOTpl

Dear @Luksus and Dear other UT Friends

31.1). I would like to buy a tablet with SIM based internet and X605L seems to be the only one which supports Ubuntu Touch (?)

31.2). Would you help me to take the decision if it's a good idea to spend 170+ EUR for such a 3GB/32GB X605L, please?

31.3). Is there a chance that X605L might be ported to UT 24.04 in the future? Or maybe the 20.04 is the last one Release for X605L ... ?

31.4). Do you know maybe about any other SIM tablet/s which might be ported soon to UT 20.04?

Thank you for your Great Effort and I wish you All the Best and kind regards~~ Piotrek~~pe3no.