Best posts made by MarkG_108

Hello. Just wanted those who work on Ubuntu Touch to know that I donated $50 Canadian to UBports (via PayPal).

I got a Galaxy Nexus phone with one gig of RAM, just last year. This was my first smart phone (I'm a late adopter). I got this from a used computer store for fifty bucks. I installed LineageOS on it (without GApps) and was happy with it.

Recently, I bought a Nexus 5 for eighty bucks to try out Ubuntu Touch. It's also an older phone, but it's better than the Galaxy Nexus (the Nexus 5 has two gigs of RAM rather than the mere one gig of the Galaxy Nexus). The problem was that the sim card slot for the Galaxy Nexus was a mini-sim, whereas the slot for the Nexus 5 was for the micro-sim cutout (meaning a move of the card between phones could only be one way). So, I have not been able to test the full phone functions of the Ubuntu Touch. However, I decided to go with Ubuntu Touch and the Nexus 5, and have removed the sim card from my Galaxy Nexus, and cut it for the Nexus 5. So, the Nexus 5 with Ubuntu Touch is now my phone, full stop. I'm confident things will work out well.

@TotalSonic Well, I took another look at uNav, and I think I may have succeeded. From uNav's offline instruction page (which frankly is too sparse), I did ultimately manage to download map tiles using the program downloadosmtiles. The link suggested "zoom=5:18", but a zoom of eighteen, I discovered, is nuts. So, after it was downloading for a while (like, for many hours), I stopped it, content with a zoom of 17 (which had finished downloading).

Anyway, searching locations works on it, and the maps look good (tiles are from OpenStreetMap). I don't know if GPS on the phone works okay or not, though (I'll have to test it outside).

[edit] Well, I walked around outside, and it knew where I was going. So, that's very good. It's a shame that the directions function in offline mode doesn't work. But, in general, my main concern for having a mapping program is to be able to always know where I am. So, I'm very pleased with its performance. And it seems to be very good in finding locations that I search for.

[edit: I have changed this to properly using Libertine to install the program rather than incorrectly using APT]

This is how to install the classic AI program Eliza onto your phone.

First, I assume people here have installed a Libertine container on their phone. Doing this is pretty straight forward using the phone's System Settings (just look up Libertine there).

So, run the following commands in your terminal to install it:

phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ libertine-container-manager install-package -p libchatbot-eliza-perl

It should now be installed. Now, create a file called .bash_aliases, which will allow the program to be easily opened. Any text editor will do, as long as it is saved to your phone's home directory. Below is how to do it with the commandline text editor Nano:

phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ nano .bash_aliases

Now, you will be in the commandline text editor Nano. Type the following in it:

alias eliza='libertine-launch -i xenial /usr/share/doc/libchatbot-eliza-perl/examples/./simple'

Close Nano via pressing Ctrl-X, saving the file (if using the terminal on your phone, you'll see a menu thingy on the lower left with "Nano" as one of the choices -- select this then select Ctrl-X, and save the newly created file.) This allows the simple command of "eliza" (without quotes) to start the program.

And that's it. You can now be analyzed. For example:

phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ eliza

Welcome to your therapy session.
Your therapist's name is Liz.

Liz:	Hello, I am a computer program. 
you:	Hello.
Liz:	Hi. What seems to be your problem?
you:	I wish more people would use Ubuntu Touch.
Liz:	Why do you say you wish more people would use Ubuntu Touch?
you:	Because it is a good OS for smartphones.          
Liz:	Is that the real reason?
you:	Of course!
Liz:	Does talking about this bother you?
you:	No, but you are starting to bother me.
Liz:	Are you saying no just to be negative?
you:	Sorry.  I don't mean to be negative.
Liz:	It did not bother me. Please continue.
you:	Thank you.  Now I must go.  Goodbye.
Liz:	I think you should talk to a REAL analyst.  Ciao! 
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ 

For reference:

Some information on Libertine here: https://docs.ubports.com/en/latest/userguide/dailyuse/libertine.html

Where I obtained the information on creating the .bash_aliases file to make opening the program easier with a simple command: https://blog.arubislander.nl/2018/09/running-additional-command-line-tools.html And note, any text editor (rather than Nano) could create the file, as long as it's uploaded to your phone via adb or whatever.

I just wanted to say that a great job has been done on the design of the Terminal. For the longest time, I was frustrated, when using Nano, by the lack of a Ctrl+X option. I looked at the menu of keyboards (in the lower left), and saw it had "Nano" on the top (which I assumed was a header indicating what program I was using), with Fn, Cmd, Ctrl, and Scr as menu items to choose from (Ctrl being the default). It drove me bonkers that the Ctrl menu item did not include the option of Ctrl+X, which made using Nano impossible. I just discovered that "Nano", in the menu options, is in fact a keyboard menu item (and not just a header) giving further options (including Ctrl+X). Great stuff.

@lduboeuf Okay, so I reinstalled UT. I'll test it tomorrow. I suspect the messaging is working fine. I thought something might be off because a text that's regularly sent from my employer did not show up. I then searched, found the bug, and, I suspect mistakenly, assumed that the phone was not displaying this text I was expecting. It turns out that no one in my work place received this regular communique from my employer. So, likely nothing is wrong. But, to verify, tomorrow I plan to text a lot of people to see if more than a few conversations show up.

Hello. Just wanted to acknowledge that I tried a couple of new games, and I enjoyed them. 2048 and Tux Dungeon were good to play. Thanks for the effort to the developers of these games.

Well, I'm pretty sure that MMS group texts were messed up, and perhaps this led to the reporting of text history to be off.

However, I feel that maybe I had not set up things correctly. So, I'm going to try to reinstall Ubuntu Touch. But, this time I'll be sure to make the install as clean as possible, via wiping and formatting my phone first and then installing the OS. Then, I'll be sure to have data turned on and the settings for MMS/APN properly set (I think Ubuntu does this automatically, but I suspect I messed it up by screwing around, so I'm going to try again to be sure).

So, I'm going to give Ubuntu Touch another try.

I initially loaded Ubuntu Touch on my Nexus 5 phone with Canadian English. But, I noticed that it renders everything as US English. So, I've now loaded my phone (Nexus 5) with UK English, which does work. Canadian English is closer to UK English, though there are a few differences. Anyway, I just thought I'd point out that the Canadian English option seems faulty -- or, at least, it isn't reflected in some of the central apps (like Contacts).

Well, I'm glad to read that Ubuntu Touch takes privacy more seriously than does iOS. I've never used iOS nor do I plan to. OTOH, I did make a build of LineageOS 14.1 for the Nexus 5, to try it, and I will say, that it:

• offered to encrypt the entire phone if I so chose, and...
• gave the option of disallowing any apps that exceeded certain specified access settings (granted, I can't recall the exact settings it specified, but I do recall it giving some such option -- which I did take and which did not limit the basic functionality of the phone).

I haven't yet seen anything close to this from Ubuntu Touch.

Does Ubuntu Touch have an offline map app (that maybe uses Open Street Maps)?

When I was using LineageOS, I used OsmAnd+ along with UnifiedNlp. The latter (UnifiedNlp) is likely the more important of the two, in that it allowed for me to access maps (or location services) to use offline (one being "lacells"). I haven't seen anything like this in Ubuntu Touch. Does it exist? If so, do please let me know. Thanks.

@Elowan A while ago when I removed Ubuntu Touch and installed LineageOS in its place, I found that the Ubuntu Touch bootloader still remained, even though I had installed TWRP Recovery.
I currently have Ubuntu Touch on my phone. But, if I were to choose to replace it with LineageOS, I wonder if there's a way to completely replace Ubuntu Touch with LineageOS, which means also replacing the bootloader. I have a Nexus 5.

Hello. I was pleased to discover that some Ubuntu APT packages can be installed and run on the command line. I have installed a few small command line programs, via using the command "sudo mount -o rw,remount /" (as described in the instructions on setting up Anbox, and then returning the system back to "sudo mount -o ro,remount /".

But I noticed that this is surprisingly limited. I began gettng the error, "E: You don't have enough free space in /var/cache/apt/archives/." So, I attempted to clear space with "apt autoclean" and "apt clean", but to no avail.

Then, I checked out the directory "/var/cache/apt/archives/", and there doesn't seem to be anything in it. I'm not even sure that this directory exists. It seems to be a phantom directory, residing at "/dev/loop0":

blet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ df -hT
Filesystem                     Type      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev                           devtmpfs  766M  4.0K  766M   1% /dev
tmpfs                          tmpfs     186M  1.7M  184M   1% /run
/dev/mmcblk0p28                ext4       13G  3.8G  8.3G  32% /userdata
/dev/loop0                     ext2      2.0G  1.9G     0 100% /
/dev/loop1                     ext4      110M  106M  4.3M  97% /android/system
none                           tmpfs     4.0K     0  4.0K   0% /android
tmpfs                          tmpfs     929M  4.0K  929M   1% /etc/fstab
tmpfs                          tmpfs     929M  1.1M  928M   1% /var/lib/lxc/android/rootfs
/dev/disk/by-partlabel/cache   ext4      690M   13M  678M   2% /android/cache
/dev/disk/by-partlabel/persist ext4       16M  4.2M   12M  27% /android/persist
/dev/disk/by-partlabel/modem   vfat       64M   45M   20M  70% /android/firmware
none                           tmpfs     4.0K     0  4.0K   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs                          tmpfs     929M  1.0M  928M   1% /tmp
none                           tmpfs     5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
none                           tmpfs     929M  228K  928M   1% /run/shm
none                           tmpfs     100M     0  100M   0% /run/user
cgmfs                          tmpfs     100K     0  100K   0% /run/cgmanager/fs
tmpfs                          tmpfs     929M     0  929M   0% /media
tmpfs                          tmpfs     929M     0  929M   0% /var/lib/openvpn/chroot/tmp
tmpfs                          tmpfs     929M     0  929M   0% /var/lib/sudo
tmpfs                          tmpfs     186M     0  186M   0% /run/user/0
tmpfs                          tmpfs     186M   36K  186M   1% /run/user/32011
tmpfs                          tmpfs     186M     0  186M   0% /run/user/65534
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ sudo du -hsc /var/cache
[sudo] password for phablet: 
73M	/var/cache
73M	total
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ df -hT /var/cache
Filesystem     Type  Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/loop0     ext2  2.0G  1.9G     0 100% /
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ ls /dev/loop0
/dev/loop0
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ ls -l /dev/loop0
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 7, 0 Dec  7 19:10 /dev/loop0
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ ls /var/cache/apt/archives/
lock  partial
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ ls -l /var/cache/apt/archives/
total 4
-rw-r----- 1 root root    0 Dec  7 18:04 lock
drwx------ 2 root root 4096 Dec  7 18:49 partial
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ cd /var/cache/apt/archives/
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:/var/cache/apt/archives$ cd partial\
> 
bash: cd: partial: Permission denied
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:/var/cache/apt/archives$ cd partial
bash: cd: partial: Permission denied
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:/var/cache/apt/archives$ 
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:/var/cache/apt/archives$ sudo du -hsc /var/cache/apt/archives
8.0K	/var/cache/apt/archives
8.0K	total
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:/var/cache/apt/archives$ sudo du -hsc /var/cache/apt/
65M	/var/cache/apt/
65M	total
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:/var/cache/apt/archives$ cd ..
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:/var/cache/apt$ ls
archives  pkgcache.bin  srcpkgcache.bin
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:/var/cache/apt$ ls -l
total 65788
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root     4096 Dec  7 18:49 archives
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 33659744 Dec  8 02:59 pkgcache.bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 33618288 Dec  8 02:59 srcpkgcache.bin
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:/var/cache/apt$ 

/var/cache doesn't seem to have a huge amount in it. And /var/cache/apt/archives has practically nothing in it. 8.0K is too much disk usage? Leading to a not enough space error? I think not.

Though /dev/loop0, which the df command cited when I asked about /var/cache/apt/archives, says it has no space. I'm not sure what /dev/loop0 actually is, though. It's not a directory. Strange.

I quite like Yumi, but I will say that it does seem like a steal of EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator) from WALL-E.

I did a brief search for a solution, and found this, which suggests that there is no solution. Is that correct? I tried using the core media player, and I also tried UTmedia. Neither worked.

@arubislander I've been trying to follow your advice, but without luck. I set up a Libertine container, and tried to install a few command line programs (both via the GUI on the phone and on the command line) and neither has worked. From the command line, here is what I get when I try to install a simple command line calendar (and note, I have installed calcurse successfully in the past using apt --> in a previous setup of Ubuntu Touch, though not on this setup of it):

phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ libertine-container-manager install-package -p calcurse
Err:1 http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports xenial InRelease
  Temporary failure resolving 'ports.ubuntu.com'
Err:2 https://repo.ubports.com xenial InRelease
  Could not resolve host: repo.ubports.com
Err:3 http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports xenial-updates InRelease
  Temporary failure resolving 'ports.ubuntu.com'
Reading package lists...
W: Failed to fetch http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/dists/xenial/InRelease  Temporary failure resolving 'ports.ubuntu.com'
W: Failed to fetch http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/dists/xenial-updates/InRelease  Temporary failure resolving 'ports.ubuntu.com'
W: Failed to fetch https://repo.ubports.com/dists/xenial/InRelease  Could not resolve host: repo.ubports.com
W: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.
Reading package lists...
Building dependency tree...
Reading state information...
The following package was automatically installed and is no longer required:
  libpcre16-3
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove it.
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  calcurse
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
Need to get 193 kB of archives.
After this operation, 746 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Err:1 http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports xenial/universe armhf calcurse armhf 4.0.0-1
  Temporary failure resolving 'ports.ubuntu.com'
E: Failed to fetch http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/pool/universe/c/calcurse/calcurse_4.0.0-1_armhf.deb  Temporary failure resolving 'ports.ubuntu.com'

E: Unable to fetch some archives, maybe run apt-get update or try with --fix-missing?
Reading package lists...
Building dependency tree...
Reading state information...
The following package was automatically installed and is no longer required:
  libpcre16-3
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove it.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
libertine-container-manager:184: ERROR: install_package():	Package 'calcurse' failed to install in container 'xenial'
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ 

phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ libertine-launch -i xenial calcurse
proot error: 'calcurse' not found (root = /home/phablet/.cache/libertine-container/xenial/rootfs, cwd = /home/phablet, $PATH=/home/phablet/bin:/home/phablet/.local/bin:/home/phablet/bin:/home/phablet/.local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/snap/bin:/usr/games)
fatal error: see `proot --help`.
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ 

So, I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.

@AppLee, thanks again. I will look at the link you provided for modifying the app. In the meantime, I did provide some feedback on the GitLab page of the site: https://gitlab.com/nfsprodriver/UTmedia/issues/2

@doniks said in I find the UT Linux structure both interesting and odd:

Just to geht the obvious out of the way: You are connected to the internet, right?

My WiFi was on, but my data was turned off. I've discovered that with UT, connecting to the internet via WiFi alone doesn't seem to work now (at least on my phone at present). By comparison, on my old Galaxy Nexus, running LineageOS 13, which now has no SIM card (and I intentionally turned off the cell data), it can still access the internet via WiFi.

Okay, doing a factory reset from the Recovery utility failed. But, doing a fresh install did fix the wifi. I'm not sure what broke it in the first place, but it is now working. So, problem solved.

mark@debian:~/Templates/Nexus5/ubuntutouchinstall$ adb shell
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ nmcli g
STATE      CONNECTIVITY  WIFI-HW  WIFI     WWAN-HW  WWAN    
connected  full          enabled  enabled  enabled  enabled 
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ 

@doniks, Okay, time for attempt #2. First, cellular data is off, but WiFi is on, so there is internet access. And the system is up to date.... okay, great, it worked this time. Thanks for your help.