I run a BQ E4.5 since March 2015 as my daily phone. Meanwhile, also my wife and my 11 years old son do. It has all the apps we need (Dekko, Telegram, browser, sms, phone calls, cam, uNav, ...) and, even more important, it is free of spy ware and phoning-home apps. I do not need FB and What's Ape and so I really do not miss them.
Matthias
@advocatux said in Porting in 2019 - a true journey:
@wgarcia we have mailing lists but nobody uses them
Yes, nobody uses them because they are not promoted by the UBports core team. In the times of UbuntuTouch (Canonical) we have had very successful communication over the list ubuntu-phone@lists.launchpad.net (the list is even still active and from time to time I get mails from it or ask there for help).
When Canonical closed the "shop" and we moved to UBports, started this idea "we don't need mailing lists, we need this ongoing gaggle in the tg groups" which is not archived and not searchable and full of posts which have nothing to do with technical problems, full of jpegs/gifs/emotions etc. When we (wgarcia and I) tried to subscribe in December 2017 the list has even been moderated and subscription was a mess.
The forum here is better, at least archived and searchable. But one needs a browser and to be online, while mails could be read offline. I.e. the forum is far away from being as useful as a mailing list.
Just my humble opinion on this.
Matthias
Please elaborate about the near future and milestones of Dekko2. I do not see any progress for weeks. During the day I use the MUA on my FreeBSD laptops (mutt), when I'm on "the road" I do (or try to) use Dekko2 in my BQ E4.5. Due to its ongoing crashes and other issues (see the tracker) I'm forced to return to my M10 FHD which still runs the latest UT version of Canonical with the old Dekko 
This situation is, at least for me, really a showstopper.
Thanks
Matthias
@simplicissimax said in What are must have apps? Things you can do:
@guru Thank you for your reply! I'm afraid I don't have experience with chroot, but what I have read sounds promising
Some questions remain, but I feel I should gain some experience before asking them here. I will experiment with this
Start reading here: https://gurucubano.gitbooks.io/bq-aquaris-e-4-5-ubuntu-phone/content/en/chapter27.html
@cheniek said in How to hide/show my ID on phone calls?:
@guru Your suggestion has helped
These codes are the so called GSM-codes. The exact implementation maybe provider specific. When other mobile systems have some GUI feature to control this kind of function, I think they just fire up the same GSM-code.
It seems on all my other BQ E4.5 which are still running the latest Canonical OTA-15 that there have been coming down this night an update to "Version37" and there is also some more rumor about this in the mailing-list ubuntu-phone@lists.launchpad.net
Ofc, this is nearly off-topic here, but maybe someone from Canonical or BQ is reading this and could shet a bit light on it...
Thx
matthias
Using GnuPG-card in the UbuntuPhone BQ E4.5:
Create a complete Linux system into ~phablet/myRoot/ :
phablet@ubuntu-phablet-bq:~$ mkdir myRoot
phablet@ubuntu-phablet-bq:~$ cd myRoot
phablet@ubuntu-phablet-bq:~$ sudo tar xzf ubports-touch.rootfs-xenial-armhf.tar.gz
phablet@ubuntu-phablet-bq:~$ sudo chroot myRoot/
Install additional packages into the Linux system:
root@ubuntu-phablet:/# apt-get install pinentry-curses
root@ubuntu-phablet:/# apt-get install pass
root@ubuntu-phablet:/# apt-get install libudev-dev
root@ubuntu-phablet:/# apt-get install gcc
root@ubuntu-phablet:/# apt-get install libc-dev
root@ubuntu-phablet:/# apt-get install make
compile in myRoot the following pieces (in the given order):
libgpg-error-1.33
libassuan-2.5.1
libksba-1.3.5
npth-1.6
libgcrypt-1.8.4
gnupg-2.2.12
always with ./configure && make && sudo make install; the software ends
up below /usr/local (which is /home/phablet/myRoot/usr/local when one looks from outside the chroot'ed phone system);
note: gpg2 is /usr/local/bin/gpg
Now from the phone system configure:
$ mkdir ~/.gnupg
$ chmod 0700 ~/.gnupg
$ cat .gnupg/gpg.conf
#
agent-program /home/phablet/myRoot/usr/local/bin/gpg-agent
$ cat .gnupg/gpg-agent.conf
pinentry-program /home/phablet/myRoot/usr/bin/pinentry-curses
scdaemon-program /home/phablet/myRoot/usr/local/libexec/scdaemon
log-file /home/phablet/gpg-agent.log
log-file /dev/null
debug-level guru
max-cache-ttl 10
Due to the nature of the installation in the chrooted system we
need small wrapper scripts to set PATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, ... and
other stuff;
$ cat ~/gpg.sh
#!/bin/sh
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/phablet/myRoot/usr/local/lib export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
PATH=/home/phablet/myRoot/usr/local/bin:$PATH export PATH
GNUPGHOME=/home/phablet/.gnupg export GNUPGHOME
GPG_TTY=$(tty) export GPG_TTY
/home/phablet/myRoot/usr/local/bin/gpg-agent \
--homedir /home/phablet/.gnupg \
--daemon \
--pinentry-program /home/phablet/myRoot/usr/bin/pinentry-curses
/home/phablet/myRoot/usr/local/bin/gpg-connect-agent /bye
/home/phablet/myRoot/usr/local/bin/gpg $*
run and create for test a keypair (later we want to use the GnuPG-card
for this)
$ ~/gpg.sh --full-generate-key
gpg-agent[2973]: enabled debug flags: mpi crypto memory cache memstat hashing ipc
gpg (GnuPG) 2.2.1; Copyright (C) 2017 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
Please select what kind of key you want:
(1) RSA and RSA (default)
(2) DSA and Elgamal
(3) DSA (sign only)
(4) RSA (sign only)
Your selection?
...
This starts the gpg-agent as:
$ ps ax | grep gpg-a
2974 ? Ss 0:00 /home/phablet/myRoot/usr/local/bin/gpg-agent --homedir /home/phablet/.gnupg --daemon --pinentry-program /home/phablet/myRoot/usr/bin/pinentry-curses
Now we can use the the pass command we installed in the chroot'es system with
$ cat pass.sh
#!/bin/sh
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/phablet/myRoot/usr/local/lib export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
PATH=/home/phablet/myRoot/usr/local/bin:$PATH export PATH
GNUPGHOME=/home/phablet/.gnupg export GNUPGHOME
GPG_TTY=$(tty) export GPG_TTY
unset GPG_AGENT_INFO
/home/phablet/myRoot/usr/bin/pass $*
Init the pass storage as:
$ ./pass.sh init Matthias
Password store initialized for Matthias
web/bla: reencrypting to A62DCD2809AC14F6
$ find .password-store/
.password-store/
.password-store/.gpg-id
Insert some password for test:
$ ./pass.sh insert -m web/bla
Enter contents of web/bla and press Ctrl+D when finished:
password-bla
Username: guru
$ ./pass.sh web/bla
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Please enter the passphrase to unlock the OpenPGP secret key: │
│ "Matthias Apitz (test) <guru@sisis.de>" │
│ 2048-bit RSA key, ID 93A6FBF52FA76DB0, │
│ created 2017-09-22 (main key ID 3FECB79DDDA409E4). │
│ │
│ │
│ Passphrase: ***_______________________________________________ │
│ │
│ <OK> <Cancel> │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
password-bla
Username: guru
We now can use gpg2 and pass directly in the phone to have always our secrets, PIN's etc. with us.
I have here two screen-shots, taken of the terminal-app: In the 1st I have typed in the command ./pass.sh web/foo asking for the (cleartext) values of web/foo (which could be your bank account, login credentials or whatever you can think of). The result visible in this screen (xxx yyy) is only shown after entering the passphrase to unlock your GnuPG secret key, see screen 2. The key is 4096 bits RSA. The key store remains 10 seconds (configurable) unlocked, after which you're asked again for the passphrase.
Matthias
To answer my own question:
root@ubuntu-phablet:/# apt-get install gcc
root@ubuntu-phablet:/# apt-get install libc-dev
root@ubuntu-phablet:/# apt-get install make
HIH
Maybe someone could make a table of all the good proposals or feature requests and we can all vote up/down the requests and have at the end a list what matters most.
My new feature list for OTA 3:
Thx for the hard work to all of you.
matthias
On my beloved FreeBSD I had to install the following ports (all
from a very recent ports tree, November 30):
# pkg info | egrep 'gtk3|webki|md4|meson|ninja'
gtk3-3.24.23_2 Gimp Toolkit for X11 GUI (current stable version)
kf5-kdewebkit-5.76.0 KF5 library providing integration of QtWebKit
libcanberra-gtk3-0.30_5 Implementation of the Freedesktop sound theme spec
md4c-0.4.7 Markdown Parser written in C
meson-0.56.0 High performance build system
ninja-1.10.1,2 Small build system closest in spirit to Make
qt5-webkit-5.212.0.a4_4 QtWebKit with a more modern WebKit code base
webkit2-gtk3-2.30.1_2 Opensource browser engine using the GTK+ 3 toolkit
With this the build of the app was just as simple as written in its README.md:
$ meson build && ninja -C build
The app needs around 120 shared libs. It starts fine and I have here a screen of my plasma desktop with the app and some text and a photo:
Hello,
In the forum about the mobile Purism L5 someone announced some app to write a diary:
https://forums.puri.sm/t/app-simple-diary/11508
https://github.com/johan-bjareholt/simple-diary-gtk
I have below its README file. Its dependencies are:
Can we fullfill them?
Thanks
matthias
Simple and lightweight diary app.
Many features are still missing as this is a work in progress.
First install dependencies listed above
Secondly run the following: meson build && ninja -C build
Executable will be built at build/src/simple-diary
Build the org.johanbjare.SimpleDiary.yml manifest as with any other flatpak
manifest with flatpak-builder
Since last week I have a new car which does not have any CD player anymore, but Bluetooth. So, apart of connecting an external keyboard, it's the first time that I use Bluetooth with my E4.5. After fiddling with the hassle to get the two devices, car and E4.5, to connect to each other (for some reason the best way is to instruct the car to connect to the E4.5 and not the other way around), it plays nicely music from the Music app or the browser from YT. In the car's display touch screen it shows the progress of seconds of the title and "buttons" for pause, play, skip to next/previous title. But these buttons have no effect in the Music app, i.e. I have to use the app itself to manage titles, which is an security issue while driving.
Is this supposed to work? What can I do to investigate why it does not work?
A related question to Music app: How can I make a playlist from a bunch of MP3 files in a directory without adding them file by file to the playlist? Something like
ls -C1 *.mp3 > playlist
and then load the file playlist.
In my Wifi area at home I see the following problem with my E4.5, latest UBports OTA (but it's for longer like this):
When I wake-up my device after some minutes of not using it (and it was active in Wifi before), the screen looks like this:
The SSID of my AP is tarara but it is not green and the Wifi icon in the upper status bar is empty. When I tap tarara it goes green and the Wifi icon is filled, like this:
I run tests without tapping the AP just with the browser to http://myip.nl and it shows the correct IP addr of my ISP, i.e. Wifi is doing fine.
Why is this and what does this mean?
@gunnygordon said in Import Contacts To Ubuntu Touch:
$ cat contacts.vcf | sed -e "s/END:VCARD/END:VCARD\n/" > phone-contacts-touch.vcf
Another winner of the Useless Use of Cat Award
Sorry, could not resist.
I was invited by someone to a messanger service called Threema... do we have an app or webapp for this? Even if not, any comments about it?
You can SSH from an xterm, urxvt-terminal or kconsole into the phone, look with sqllite into the database where the SMS are stored cut the text you like with the mouse and paste it into any other terminal into a vim session.
The SMS and call history are stored in a sqlite database. The layout and more details are here described in my samll booklet: https://guru-1.gitbook.io/bq-aquaris-e-4-5-ubuntu-phone/en/chapter13
It should be relatively easy to INSERT data rows there from some XML file with the data of the SMS.
Can you look into the database with the shown commands how many rows (i.e. pictures) you have there? Maybe the time is used not for indexing itself but for rendering the pictures into the screen of the app. My number went down from 11800 to 180 and this helped me.
@guru said in UBports Store Open:
Finally I got a mail from sales@ saying that they have shipped my goods on October 19. Today is already October 28 and nothing arrived in 8 days...
sales@ said in a mail that the parcel was sent on October 19. Today is November 3rd. I will wait until November 19 and then instruct Amex to withdraw the money due to goods not delivered.
Thanks