@Vlad-Nirky What phone and version did you try it on? On Fairphone 5 24.04-1.1 I can't get the SD to appear.

Interestingly enough, when I have an SD card insertd on my phone and I run dmesg | grep ciborium I repeatedly get udisks2.go:322: Issues while processing /org/freedesktop/UDisks2/block_devices/loop6: interface org.freedesktop.UDisks2.Block not found, while when I don't have it inserted the output is empty.

I can read/write to a USB I had though: I hopped onto my Pi 5 running Ubuntu 24.04 and ran these commands:

sudo umount /dev/sda
sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda

This formatted the drive to ext4, and with an adapter the drive was recognised.

This is what it looks like on the GUI (the very bottom icon is the USB drive, which wouldn't show up if it weren't correctly connected (ie. in such a way to make read/write operations possible):

After performing the same formatting process on an SD card and using an external adapter, it also allowed read/write operations.

I also formatted another SD to FAT format, so UT can handle a variety of formats (probably ExFAT as well for example): it wasn't reading it before, but my other devices weren't either, so it ended up being a problem with the SD (fixable with reformatting in this case) rather than the phone.

It also works with my Samsung T7 SSD, without any need for sudo there for whatever reason.

@Charly I can only see SD cards connected via USB, not in the internal reader

@flohack How do we apply to become moderators in our native language?

Still working fine

More info here: https://forums.ubports.com/post/91464

Voxi also works

said in What are a few straightforward ways to write notes in Ubuntu Touch and be able to get them on the Internet/WWW on my Debian PC?:

emacs

While all packages should work just fine inside of Libertine, the main issue is making the desktop tools usable on the phone.

Libertine Tweak Tool was good for resizing text on the app to a comfortably readable font on a phone screen, only thing missing now is modifier keys on the software keyboard, and a way to force the keyboard to appear inside of emacs for me: this is because the 'touch-to-click' compatibility system isn't always the most reliable, and a program like emacs is of course macro-heavy.

My biggest way around the Desktop / Mobile syncing problem actually comes down to avoiding it as much as possible, by having my phone do (almost) everything, as syncing takes time while HDMI output to an external display is instant

I was thinking a custom keyboard with macros could build on Malakiboard. I've cloned jerk-click, jerk-installer and jerk-packages in the hope of PRing some day.

For now, thank you for making it easy for everyone to install these 'hacks' which I believe should and could become a part of UT!

@mirroronthewall Yes, this is surprisingly useful, as it means you don't always have to whip out a hardware keyboard, which defeats the point of the small form factor of a phone.

Missing support for modifier keys is a big issue when using GUI apps in Libertine, as touch-to-mouse conversion often doesn't behave as it should and can get you 'stuck', so a fallback to keyboard shortcuts is just as necessary there as it may be useful in general: actually, your idea of creating macros for anything seems to solve many problems (including mine) at once, so congrats - now we just need to figure out how!

The closest I've found is Ambot Installer: Hacks and Mods, although I need to set up a persistent amd64 QEMU instance on my arm64 laptop before I can allow myself to experiment with it freely (it's the only way I got the installer working). Other tools may be available but I have not been able to surface them yet, I will update this thread as I learn more about the issue and potential solutions.

[UPDATE]

Here is a list of interesting posts related to this problem, which may be a good starting point for building a bridge towards the solution: These are previous conversations on the repos which appear to have been abbandoned:

• https://github.com/ubports/keyboard-component/issues/96
  • gitlab.com/ubports/apps/terminal-app/-/issues/78
  • https://gitlab.com/ubports/development/core/lomiri-keyboard/-/issues/96

Instead, here are some useful links related to Malakiboard, which should be a good foundation to build macro functionality on:

• https://github.com/kugiigi/jerk-click
• https://github.com/kugiigi/jerk-installer
• https://github.com/kugiigi/jerk-packages

@Opolork The draft email method is quite clever and I would use it if it worked on my gmail, but unfortunately it doesn't.

The sync is not instant, but it works eventually: perfect while I'm transitioning to UT!

@wgarcia Yes, on 24.04-1.1 on Fairphone 5 the button to connect to Evernote does not do anything. Do you have any tips on setting up sync with NextCloud, such as any resources which were useful to you in the process? It could greatly benefit others on the forums (including me )

@Vlad-Nirky Hmm, not sure. Running adb root for me gives error message adb: unable to connect for root: closed, but I can use sudo inside adb shell: using that would probably let me get a step closer, by allowing me to copy data to an SD card for instance. The problem is my computer isn't an adb client so I can't just use my phone as a host and run adb root on it.

Going back to the module installation, I should definitely look into that (or whatever procedure I need to enable adb root), as it sounds better than the whole hassle of the SD card (which funnily enough is one of TWRP's limitations).

[UPDATE]

I've been told by an admin of UT's Telegram group that adb root simply hasn't been added to UT. This shouldn't be a problem, as utilities like rsync and scp, which are meant to work over a network, can be set up to work over for example USB (or maybe even Ethernet, don't know which would be faster or in what scenario).

I may test backing up and restoring a Waydroid container with SD card, SSD and PC (using sudo on UT so that I have the priviledges to save all kinds of rights).

I've been told by the same admin this works: therefore, all that's left is finding the right command for the job, so that it restores a Waydroid container to a working state (although this procdeure should be applicable to any app or user data or configuration).

@hummlbach isn't there a way to unminimize like in Ubuntu? Like, surely I don't have to install every man page manually...

@Vlad-Nirky Did you run adb root beforehand?

@gpatel-fr Perfect, thank you!

@Charly said in Backup and restore (TWRP-style):

If you copy to an ext4 usb stick and use rsync with sudo, all different rights should be applied correctly.

This might help I suppose, and there's probably a way to configure rsync to work via cable. We'll see...

@Vlad-Nirky The truth is I have no idea, only way is to test it I guess. I also assume I'll have to run adb root first to download all files.

The adb user documentation (https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/modules/adb/+/refs/heads/main/docs/user/adb.1.md) doesn't seem to be of much use in answering this question.

@Keneda do we have a GitLab issue to follow progress for Fairphone 5? I find this is one of the phone's most important features, and getting AGPS (where Internet helps with the GPS fix) could really benefit users, helping UT usability compared to Android

@Moem Thanks for your input, backing up your home directory is definitely a great idea and is what people normally opt for.

Below I'll try and summarise what I've learnt for solving my problem, which might help people facing a similar problem.

Please remember I have not tried restoring yet to see if every single thing on the list was backed up, the one thing that's certain is if you have files in the home directory and you back up that, those are safe (you can always check they successfully made it to your computer by browsing inside the folder).

Backing up your home directory

1. Connect phone to computer.
2. Make sure the adb command is working (run adb devices to see if there's any output etc.).
3. Run adb pull /home.

You should receive some output about whether all your files made it to your computer, and obviously you can check for yourself by browsing them on your PC.

Why should I backup userdata instead of just home?

If you want to take it a step further, I'd recomment backing up the entire userdata folder, which also contains the home folder mentioned previously: as far as I've been able to gather just by asking other users on UBPorts' Telegram servers, this includes the items on the list below.

Things inside userdata which are useful to back up

• the settings you changed in the settings app
• your fingerprints for unlocking your phone
• the apps currently installed on your device
• the apps' data: for example, all the apps and everything else needed to run your Waydroid container exactly in the state it is in now
• packages installed via nix and snap

Backing up userdata

Do the same but run adb pull /userdata.
Basically if you ever lose your userdata you just need to replace your current /userdata folder on your phone with the previous backup of /userdata on your computer.

While I would probably simply run something like adb shell 'rm -rf /userdata && mkdir -p /userdata' && adb push /path/to/userdata /userdata for restore, do not run it unless you know what you're doing, I have not verified this to be working and need to check with people more knowledgeable than me on UT to confirm/fix.

This is the best I have for now, I'll update / add to this if I come across anything better

@advocatux it's hard to stop myself from doing so sometimes XD

I eventually figured out how to get the 'Sealed' app working, by changing the URL from bitwarden.com (the default) to https://vault.bitwarden.eu. bitwarden.eu does not work!