Android

My ASUS Transformer’s charger was not working

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Well, getting to work was not so fun this morning. I usually use my ASUS Transformer for _a_lot_ at work. When I got in to work today, I had 40% on the tablet and a drained dock. Monday I had come with a 78%/97% charge on my tablet/dock and left with a tablet charge remaining in the 70s. Andera has good battery life so I wasn’t worried, especially since my office has plenty of juice to go around.

Well, today I plug in and imagine my surprise when the frakking thing refuses to charge! Nothing, nadda! I tried hooking it up to my work stations USB 2.0 port, and Andera notified that USB debugging and ASUS Sync crap was working, so obviously +/- the right USB 3.0 pins, the cable ought to be fine. None of the electrical sockets worked.

About ready to try the freezer trick and annoyed for the first chunk of my work day, I yanked the adapter out on my way to lunch, and noticed something irksome. The base of my adapter wasn’t set quite right, maybe 3 to 5 milimetres off. Snapped it back into place, plugged it back in, and dang nabbit, the son of a biscuit eater started to charge.

Sure enough, I dislodged the plug end of the adapter and snapped it back again, no problem. You just push (really hard) down on the segment where indicated, and poll it up; I used my desk for help. Simple, and fully an issue of internationalization. Somehow the bloody thing had gotten dislodged.

That’s what I get, for countries not being able to decide on a single electrical socket >_<.

TF101 Coolness

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My tablets dock has been sitting unused since I got home from work on Friday, docking it at the office I have 97% charge on the dock; and it was probably 98% when I hit the road on Friday.

Thoughts of modal/semi-modal editing on Android

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In regards to modal, I mean `like vi`, where in the keyboard is shifted between a normal “Command” mode for manipulating text and an “Insert” mode for typing text into the buffer. A prime example can be found by learning vi (or vim or elvis). Personally I think this kind of model fits well with a mobile device like Android, even more so than it does a PC—emacs pinky be damned ;). Which makes me think of something like this:

  • A simple “Notepad” grade editor
  • Press a designated command key, send following keystrokes to command dispatcher
  • Useful stuff: save/load, buffer list, etc.
  • Scripting/configuration language

Something uniquely respective of my vi/vim heritage, yet incorporating lessons from the emacsen school. As a former XEmacs user, I do know quite well that my beloved Vi IMproved is not always well subverted. Using the volume up/down keys (and settings to rebind ofc) would make perfect replacements for Control and Meta (Alt/Escape). Using a keyboard with suitable keys, obviously eliminates this: and for on screen work with a big enough display, I really have to reccomend The Hackers Keyboard. It is an interesting preposition, at least. For scripting language, that one is a stickly wickly one. Android is not well suited to this in the conventional sense. Unless you want to implement one in a suitable subset of Java (double barf). An interesting idea would be to compile something like Lua or a Scheme interp’ to native code, and communicate with it using some type of local socket and RPC. That might be interesting to toy with. Then perhaps, “Plugin-lets” that add useful tools, such as busybox or git. That’s less feasible but certainly interesting.

Notes on the ASUS Transformer’s file system / partition layout

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rootfs on / type rootfs (rw,relatime)

# physical
/dev/block/mmcblk0p1 on /system type ext4 (ro,relatime,barrier=1,data=ordered,noauto_da_alloc)
/dev/block/mmcblk0p7 on /data type ext4 (rw,relatime,barrier=1,data=ordered,noauto_da_alloc)
/dev/block/mmcblk0p2 on /cache type ext4 (rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime,barrier=1,data=ordered)
/dev/fuse on /mnt/sdcard type fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=1023,group_id=1023,default_permissions,allow_other)

# special
tmpfs on /dev type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,relatime,mode=755)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,relatime,mode=600)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,relatime)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,relatime)
debugfs on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw,relatime)
none on /acct type cgroup (rw,relatime,cpuacct)
tmpfs on /mnt/asec type tmpfs (rw,relatime,mode=755,gid=1000)
tmpfs on /mnt/obb type tmpfs (rw,relatime,mode=755,gid=1000)
none on /dev/cpuctl type cgroup (rw,relatime,cpu)
tmpfs on /Removable type tmpfs (rw,relatime,mode=755,gid=1000)

/dev, /dev/pts, /proc, and /sys are normal Linux stuff. I’m not familiar with /dev/cpuctl or /sys/kernel/debug but they are fairly self explanitory! Whatever /mnt/asec, /mnt/obb, and /acct and numerous other things are explained briefly in /init.rc; poking around /acct is interesting. The tempfs on /Removable pretty much just serves as a place to put mount points for external media, i.e. MicroSD / SD cards and USB drives. The mmcblk device is clearly responsible for the most important parts of the Android system: /data and /system are your air and water. Under /data, you will pretty much find all your apps (stored on internal memory), and in /system, well, stuff that helps make your system work; d’uh. /system and /data can probably be looked at as read-only and read-write portions of the Android File System Hierachy, I guess. As far as mmcblk itself is concerned, it’s just the internal memory card. The thing that I find rather interesting, is that the user storage area (/mnt/sdcard -> /sdcard), or what everyone typically interacts with, is provided through some type of relationship to FUSE, as opposed to directly through mmcblk0. This is curious enough to me, that I would consider poking around further, or even digging closer into ROMs for the Transformer, to be worth the effort. Yeah, I’ve just got to figure out how crap works, lol. On the upside, I know better than to disassemble my new “Stable” system and I’m to cheap to get one just for testing puposes.

com.google.process.gapps force close on my ASUS Transformer – solved

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This isn’t an issue I’ve encountered before but since last night, I’ve been getting these. Very regularly. Today, I noticed an association between this and using the web browser.  Sure enough if I went into Settings -> Accounts & Sync -> that Google account; and unchecked “Sync Browser”, it stopped. Like wise if I toggled it back on, it would rapidly force close.

Being more scientific, I toggled sync on/off for some other Google services without getting any force closes. Problem therefore became, how to fix this?

Android apps generally store their data under /data/data/package-name; where typically /data/data is your internal memory and package-name is a Java dotted package name like com.android.browser; that’s just how it is I’m afraid. Inside, I noticed nothing very interesting. Mostly an XML file related to settings and some databases. This is a Good Thing ™ except Fuck Your Life if you want more stuff on your memory card; unless you get hacky with mount points and linkages that is. Now, being frugal, I created an archive of this data folder (com.android.browser) from my root shell, then went into Settings -> Applications -> Manage Applications -> All -> Browser, force closed the browser and hit clear data. Problem solved.

Being of the SQLite3 varity, I’m sure I could splice anything of interest out of the backup back into the new Browser setup, but I’d rather get more done. An advantage of the important parts being either in cloud (book marks) or brain (passwords, etc), is the lossage is minimum. If anyone has more data on what causes it to go wonky, or on com.google.process.gapps in general, I’d be interested in your comments.

Someday I really would like to get myself a git checkout of the Android source, but I think I will wait until after Ice Cream Sandwich for that.

Web apps or native apps?

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On the desktop, I will generally opt for using a web site over an application where possible, except when an application is seriously more convenient. For example, at home I typically rely on webmail and forgo using a local client; at work the inverse is true. GMail is one of the best ways to do e-mail :-).

When it comes to e.g. Android, I will often opt in favour of a decent app, over the web version. Apps generally have less overhead then rendering a desktop-oriented website, heavy on JS and meant for the mouse, yet mobile apps sometimes suck compared to websites; mobile or web version. When it comes to Google stuff, I use the apps. The mobile versions (at least on my TF101) are fairly similar to the mobile apps. The desktop *<b>web</b>* versions are best, but the Android apps are O.K. Contrast: the Facebook app has always been crap, compared to either version of the website.

The advantage of going web with it, is that the cloud auto-magically can solve a lot of little logistical problems. Like keeping data in reasonable sync, favouring search over storage, and removing the issue of “Maintance” — all you need to keep up to date is usually your web browser, once in a blue moon. It is even possible to have web applications that are aware of one another, although this is sorely under-utilized in reality, versus what can be done. Facebook stuff is probably at the forefront, in more ways then one (but not all of them awesome).

When it comes to using an App, you gain hopefully better Native Integration. On the desktop, not so much in my experience: stuff like Mozilla Prism and Chromes app mode just don’t cut it just yet, nor does the whole add-on/extension crapola. I’m talking a *<b>Real</b>* native application. Thunderbird versus GMail. Thunderbird will always have better integration with today’s PC environments than the GMail’s web app. Well, knowing Moldy old Mozilla maybe not always, but you get the point ^_^. The few exceptions that I’ve seen are products like Dropbox, where the native application _is_ the major selling point of the experience, and thus makes the cloud go round. It just happens to have a useful web user interface to boot.

Native applications open up a whole world for interesting savings and mangles. A good example, using an Android phone, you can have device local, mobile carrier, MS Exchange, Google, and Facebook contacts all synced even though they come from seperate providers; anyone could extend their service like this, fundimentally. That’s how stuff should be done. In some cases (Google, Exchange) it is even possible to have calendar data synced. The downside is that doesn’t get merged back into the Google-cloud, and that is probably a Good Thing(tm) even if I and others might like the option of it.

I think the web is one of the better interfaces for creating applications, if you want a UI that isn’t better mapped to command line programs. Android offers quite a nice programming model, and I assume that iOS and BlackBerry-land offer something sufficent. The world of PCs not as good.

Personally, I think in the future, we will see the evolving “Mobile” experience rise up and destroy both the PC and Web 2.0. The difference is, it will be Mobile 3.0 :-). Then this will all fade away until such a millienia that notions like PC, Mac; Desktop, Laptop, Phone; all of it fades away into being about as interesting as using cornkobs to whipe your ass instead of the three sea shells.

Given the choice, it’s obvious where I stand. But the real question is, does it run unix? 😛

An interesting idea for Android development

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I could hook up my rooted phone to my netbook turned server, write the code using my ASUS Transformer, then run a batch job over SSH that compiles and installs the app on my phone.

Then connect to my phone via VNC and test it off the same Transformer 🙂

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Interesting findings. At work, my work station has always had problems using SMB/CIFS, in fact  it is almost useless but fortunately being Linux-oriented over here in Engineering, more traditional unix methods are favoured, so it is of little loss. Now the sad fact that most people use Windows, means that SMB/CIFS is easier to work with under Android than stuff like NFS or any of the multitude of similar techniques. As I rarely need to share stuff with multiple people, for my own stuff, I typically use SSHFS.

In fact, SSH is both such a part of my work flow between machines (here and espiecally at home), I wrote a handy script that lets me quickly mount my $HOME on a remote as ~/hosts/{hostname} locally. It’s useful. My workstation is setup both as a SSH client, server, and sshfs-mounter. But how to get stuff via Android, since I can’t just use CifsManager?

My ASUS Transformer obviously has support for FUSE, just looking at what `mount` says is enough to guess that. But there is no real support for SSHFS, all the goodies are missing. Since I have a very simple chroot of Debian stable, a quick `apt-get install sshfs` and bingo, all done :-). Since the stuff I’m interested in mounting at home (where SMB/CIFS works like a charm), I can just use SSHFS mounts and a shared socket. I.e. I can have things like my Dropbox mounted, get live sync, and even access locally!

Muahauhauauhuahuaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Geekicious mixed client workflow

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Okay, that is a post title that only a geek could love. So sue me, I’m geek lol. My battle pad is now fully operational, and should soon feature a charging cable extender and screen protector.

Today, I found that while the Debian chroot I have works well, sadly the linuxinstaller app in the market sucks at setting up resolv.conf. So I edited the init script it uses for an entry hook, to detect my home network and the corporate WiFi. Sadly, doing so results in DNS names going external, so something is still fraked. On the upside, editing the chroot’s /etc/hosts works, and that is what everyone here does. Never mind that the important servers have DNS names and OpenSSH can alias them to any shortname, but alas, it works.

One downside of running a terminal session on Android, BTEP will get reaped if you don’t use it for long enough. Like wise the linuxinstaller doesn’t run your bash as a login shell (!) and it’s a bug to remount the path to linuxchroot.sh as rw; so… I found how to kill two bugs with one rocket. I can leave a tmux session running and reattach at will. Muahuuahuahauhauhauaaa! Quite nicely, if I run the tmux session on the server-end, I can attach to it from another box (like my workstation), and use X forwarding; if I create a new tab from the X-terminal, it inherits enough environment to easily use the X-terminals X.Org server :-). This is even cooler because I can have the undesturned mobility of a ‘book or tablet, yet skip fouling my X session. There is also the VNC trick to run X clients on Android but I have not tried it, nor am I very interested right now.

A new idea occured to me while chatting with a friend, namely that I can export my notes directory from alice or my workstation, mount that on andrea over cifs/smb or NFS, edit locally, then get the Dropbox live sync goodness. Which still works because while alice is running at home, so is her Dropbox client and my cronjob to auto git commit my notes files!!!

Muhauhauhauahaaa!!!!!!