Appril, a pup for Android developers

[L18L]

Only option to test is to erase a disk and dd. Thus, MUST use Installation Option A to a 16GB USB stick. System booted to desktop.

No need to erase b efore dd'ing. Yes, option B resulted in kernel panic with me.

Anyone else notice the "LANGUAGE" improvement made by Barry? Not sure how to use it

just click and see...

[Rodney Byne]

To BK,

Barry,
in your blog "Appmethod looking good", you mention your
Windows 7 hard drive light is constantly flashing.

This is caused by the files indexing is turned on, on the C: drive.

To turn this facility off and save hard drive wear & tear:

Open windows explorer
Point mouse cursor to the C: drive
Right click & down to the Properties dialogue box & left click to open
Uncheck the box "Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed
in addition to file properties"

Hopefully this action should stop unwanted file indexing.
Best regards.

[rcrsn51]

SSM may be fine for beginners, but it's not appropriate for a developer's system. Consider what happens if you customize your shares, then re-run SSM. Or create four shares. Or create a [homes] share.

[gcmartin]

I think the idea that was forefront in @01Micko's eyes at the beginning when he considered SAMBA several years ago was to make it truly simple for anyone, developer or user, new/novice/experienced to have a single page understanding of initial use of SAMBA in their systems. As such, he and other developers have found cause to include it for its mere simplicity for use & understanding to start, during a time when many had little knowledge of how.

We have seen a rise in need and availability of PUPPY sharing some content, that users have with the others in their homes over their LAN. Thus Puppy now has same functionality as has been seen in all Windows/Apples/other Linux/Unix distros, where this ability is built in. With the advent of SAMBA moving to version 4, SAMBA, like Windows and Apple, talks to every known device that they talk to as well. Appril is a new project which intends to allow building of applications that can/will be used by devices connect to user LANs. As such, it is, along with it inclusion of SAMBA, a distribution point for smartPhones/smartTablets/other PUPs/video/music/etc.

I agree, that the SSM is simple!

And, there may even be ways of improving while maintaining the kind of simplicity the SSM intends. Like most things, there is always room for improvements or redesigns.

We must remember that SAMBA, as an OOTB element of Puppy Linux, is NEW! (Thanks to @Morpheus, @01Micko, @Shinobar, @TaZoC, @BarryK and others who have been instrumental in bringing up-to-date SAMBA to Puppyland's distros) Even though the community has documentation and threads to assist by easing its use, the newness is still, ever-present.

Pristine Appril with SAMBA Simple Management


Hope this is helpful

[rcrsn51]

Samba4 Basic, the successor to Samba-TNG, has a control panel that is better suited to a development system.

the newness is still, ever-present.

Thanks. I always thought that newness was temporary.

[gcmartin]

Yes, I can see your view.

But, I think the "in your face" approach that @01Micko (and @MikeB) produced, seemingly is much clearer in understanding for those "new" to SAMBA in Puppy Linux. We must remember that SAMBA did NOT exist giving Puppy Linux users this ability to share as a packaged item until the advent of the 64bit distros from the likes of @TaZoC and @01Micko. Thus, this is still NEW to many PUPPY users as there now is OOTB ability to do this thanks to the packaging we are seeing. NEW...still as many members have never used SAMBA sharing coming from 32bit PUPs. Every Windows user and many Apple users already know this stuff.

Again, the idea, I am focusing, is on something failsafe and easily understood by any user at a glance, no matter their background. They easily see in how to share something from the PUP on the home's LAN with all other home stuff, how to turn it on and how to turn it off, for simple use.

And, for 64bit users of those mentioned distros and their derivative, this easily understood utility has always been there, built-in for years, with no user complains or apparent misguided use to date.

For a developer, this I think, is what they would want to reduce support headaches.

But, again, can the interface be improved upon...YES. Here's an example of a simple extending that is used by the Developer in Just-Lighthouse PUP distro to improve user awareness and usability.

As the author shows above, there are other SAMBA utilities from the SAMBA community which are more advance than the simple utility that @01Micko produced. Those utilities, too, have been around for many more years, are stable, and many admins have been users of those utilities over time.

To @01Micko's utility credit, he reduced the learning curve for anyone to "merely looking at the screen"; thus he made a ZERO learning curve utility for anyone putting simple usage at everyone's fingertips.

Hope this is helpful.

[mpierrat25]

great env for developer !!

Put it on 32GB SDHC card : OK on my PC however not for my Acer one netbook since it does not support booting from SD slot.

I try to make a full install on HD following BK recommendations ( installquirky.x86 appril-7.1.usfs.xz ) using puppy slacko 5.31 frugal : failure for trying to prepare file on /tmp and finally out of space .

So I copy my f2fs SDpartition on the HD :

Code: Select all

 # time dd if=/dev/mmcblk0p2 bs=4M of=/dev/sda3
3536+0 records in
3536+0 records out
14831058944 bytes (15 GB) copied, 1287,6 s, 11,5 MB/s

real	21m27.609s
user	0m0.020s
sys	1m6.212s
# 

partition is OK just need to boot from grub4dos

any idea welcomed

[gcmartin]

Hello @MPierrat25 you would probably want to steer clear of Option B in the "Installation directions". Option A appears a safe approach.

Hope this helps

[Ted Dog]

my acer one can boot from sdcard if its FAST if you need to oot slower one. press F2 at start of boot then allow a few seconds then finish boot.

[mpierrat25]

@gcmartin : I guess option A is safe, I need help for setting up menu.lst in dos4grub

@Ted Dog : very interrested in booting from SD slot. I tried your trick but F2 branch on the BIOS menu
There is only 2 options F2=Setup menu F12=boot order ( but SD slot not available)

My Acer One : AOA150 Bios: v0.3310

[ETP]

.
Google Chrome for Quirky Appril 7.1 (i686) k3.17.8

For anyone who wishes to run the latest stable 32-bit version of Chrome (44.0.2403.157)within Appril.

CAVEAT:

Please be aware that in order to acheive this it has been necessary to disable ALL sandboxing
within Chrome including rendering. Do not install it if you consider that an unacceptable risk
in the context of a LINUX development environment.

Installation:

Please install the attached pet together with the "ChromeLibsForApril_i686.pet" (390KB) from here:
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id= ... sp=sharing

The initial launch of the item "Get Latest Chrome Version" on the JWM Internet sub-menu will install Chrome & set it as the default browser.
Await a final Pop Up message (White text on a blue background)before first launching Chrome.

Subsequent Update of Chrome:

Please use PPM to uninstall the existing version then run "Get Latest Chrome Version" again.
Follow the prompts and await a final invitation (White text on a blue background) to launch the new version.

The latest info on Google Chrome releases can be found here:
http://www.googlechromereleases.blogspot.co.uk

[BarryK]

a few backgrounds.

futwerk,
As usual, you have created lovely backgrounds!
Thanks for those. I particularly like #3, to go with the current green theme.

[BarryK]

BarryK wrote:

Oh yes, it has Samba 4.2.3, the full package, but I haven't put in anything to use it. I know that there has been work done by 01micko and others, for the pups, maybe someone could look into this and suggest what I could add to the next release.

Please find attached for consideration a front-end pet for Samba.
I must point out that my input was limited to the re-packaging of work done by other forum members including:

mikeb
01micko
rcrsn51
gcmartin

No scripts or conf files were changed.

Before launching, please ensure that you also install gtkdialog4-0.8.3-i486 using PPM or rather Quirky Package Manager.

Having installed both pets reboot before first launching SSM from the network sub-menu.

Thanks for you work on this. I'm a bit otherwise-engaged right now (working with Appmethod, see my blog!), but will get back to this forum thread sometime.

Regarding gtkdialog, Appril has version 0.8.3 already.

There is a pre-release of 0.8.4 available, that zibgert requires for some of his latest projects. I never updated to that, as the developer never took it to a final 0.8.4 release.

[BarryK]

To BK,

Barry,
in your blog "Appmethod looking good", you mention your
Windows 7 hard drive light is constantly flashing.

This is caused by the files indexing is turned on, on the C: drive.

To turn this facility off and save hard drive wear & tear:

Open windows explorer
Point mouse cursor to the C: drive
Right click & down to the Properties dialogue box & left click to open
Uncheck the box "Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed
in addition to file properties"

Hopefully this action should stop unwanted file indexing.
Best regards.

Rodney,
Thanks for that info.

It is a bit disconcerting to see the hard drive activity light flashing when you aren't actually doing anything on the computer, even Internet disconnected.

Running Appril right now, have written down your instructions.

Hmmm, with Windows 10, there will be real cause for concern, as you will know that Windows will be busy in the background sending off your private information.

[ETP]

Hi Barry,
BarryK wrote:

Regarding gtkdialog, Appril has version 0.8.3 already.

The Samba Frontend does not work with the woof installed version:

Code: Select all

gtkdialog-0.8.3|gtkdialog|0.8.3||BuildingBlock|256K| ..... [t2-april-official]

It requires the installation of gtkdialog4 from [pet-common-official]

Code: Select all

gtkdialog4-0.8.3-i486|gtkdialog4|0.8.3-i486||BuildingBlock|276K|

[gcmartin]

Today, I gave another go at creating using Barry's Option B. Again, I followed his steps to the letter. And, I used the recommendations in his option B electing to allow that utility to build the stick using EXT4 without journaling.

Here is a console log which might be useful as I attempted to build this to a 16GB USB stick. Hope the messages shown are helpful as the utility progress to zero the stick, create the stick, verify it, and to create a compressed image of the drive. The build is started by opening a window from a folder where all of Appril's files are contained.

Code: Select all

root# ./installquirky.x86
Verifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing installquirky  100%  
Uncompressing appril-7.1.usfs.xz to appril-7.1.usfs...
Some preliminaries on the sdb...
Size of drive=15272MB
dd: writing '/dev/sdb': No space left on device
3819+0 records in
3818+0 records out
16013852672 bytes (14.9GB) copied, 1350.786490 seconds, 11.3MB/s
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
440 bytes (440B) copied, 0.004468 seconds, 96.2KB/s
mkfs.fat 3.0.26 (2014-03-07)
mkfs.fat: warning - lowercase labels might not work properly with DOS or Windows
mke2fs 1.42.9 (4-Feb-2014)
Filesystem label=quirky2
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
Stride=0 blocks, Stripe width=0 blocks
936560 inodes, 3745792 blocks
0 blocks (0.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
Maximum filesystem blocks=3837788160
115 block groups
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
8144 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks: 
	32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208

Allocating group tables: done                            
Writing inode tables: done                            
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done   

/tmp/selfgz13836880/popadd: eval: line 31: unexpected EOF while looking for matching `''
/tmp/selfgz13836880/popadd: eval: line 32: syntax error: unexpected end of file
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
440 bytes (440B) copied, 1.546935 seconds, 284B/s
3664+0 records in
3664+0 records out
15367929856 bytes (14.3GB) copied, 8419.611174 seconds, 1.7MB/s

(gtkdialog:6428): Gtk-WARNING **: Failed to set text from markup due to error parsing markup: Error on line 1 char 104: Element 'markup' was closed, but the currently open element is 'drive'
(gtkdialog:6428): Gtk-WARNING **: Failed to set text from markup due to error parsing markup: Error on line 1 char 104: Element 'markup' was closed, but the currently open element is 'drive'
(gtkdialog:6428): Gtk-WARNING **: Failed to set text from markup due to error parsing markup: Error on line 1 char 104: Element 'markup' was closed, but the currently open element is 'drive'

Completed Appril Stick booted on a 64bit BIOS non touch PC.

Question
Do these messages indicate a problem with the 16GB USB stick?

Curious

[gcmartin]

Using eClipse and the ADT, you can download and built for ANY or every known Android. Barry has selected a limit so that he doesn't have to download the complete plethora of Android versions. Thus once you are running, you can have the development tool pull for any minimum Android you want.

Thus, NO user is locked out in your development options.

The development platform allows you to develop for the minimum Android device you expect your users to use. The Androids of era 2 and 3 are considered feature phones today as their screen sizes do not allow much meaningful information to be displayed, not to mention the processor for those are extremely slow by comparison. Further most feature phone users are old people who want ONLY a phone and rarely will look for apps. I cant find it now, but I did see a report which broke Androids versions into known age groups of users. If anyone finds it share it. I can not find my copy of that.

Hope this clarifies,a little, as there is really a lot to learn. It is SO DIFFERENT from how we have seen PUPs on PC. With PUPs typically we have a box with a detachable keyboard, a detachable mouse, a detached screen, cards we add, USBs we use for sound and wifi, etc.

Android devices have no such. So when you write, you, the developer,is deciding WHICH community of device capabilities your app will work on. In doing so, you designate that minimum device at the beginning of your build.

This is why you will sometimes see multiple apps from a vendor which by description seems to do the same thing. But, because of device limitations and performances, they must make separate apps as such.

You will too.

This is so new to our PUPPY community and it brings a whole new world of technology views which comes with it. Its an exciting combination that is just starting here in Puppyland.

[gcmartin]

@BarryK. In the next version could touch screen tracking be improved?

[Rattlehead]

Thank you so much Barry for this great achievement, you who have given us all so much already

I've run into some issues with the installation. Pardon the newbieness:

1) The App Inventor version included, is the regular MIT one, or another offline version called Live AI?

2) Does Appril include eclipse? It does not appear in the list of programs in the release announcement...

and 3) The frugal installer asks for a folder containing the vmlinuz and initrd.q files. What on earth is an initrd.q file? Last time I checked the file was called initrd.img, although truth be told it's been a while since I last tinkered with my bootloader. Maybe my Grub is obsolete?

There is no information about initrd.q on the forum, and in Barry's News only this entry: http://bkhome.org/news/?viewDetailed=00173, which I don't understand:

Quirky live-CD and frugal installations consist of two files, 'vmlinuz' and 'initrd.q'. The latter is a cpio archive, with all of Quirky as a file 'q.sfs' inside it.

The 'q' letter makes think of some kind of customization required by Quirky, but then, do you need to have an older Quirky version installed before you can try Appril? Doesn't look like it, as the installer file for Appril is called 'installquirky.x86'. So where can I get one of those initrd.q, to try the distro?

(In all my naivete I tried copying initrd.img as initrd.q, but naturally it did not do the trick, the installer threw an error... )

[mpierrat25]

Finally I managed to boot from grub4dos on my AOA150 :

Both method A or B are OK regarding installing the package, however grub proposed code from method B does not work.

In fact my machine does not recognize f2fs uuid partition.

Here is the trick (?) I used :

- copy fat partition contents from the SD created appril in a directory visible by grub4dos ( in my case /sda2 fat) and use it as a bootstrap.

see my menu.lst :

Code: Select all

# menu.lst produced by grub4dosconfig-v1.8.0
color white/blue black/cyan white/black cyan/black
splashimage=/splash.xpm
timeout 10
default 0

title Quirky 7.1 (full install on sda3)
   uuid EC89-968C
  kernel /quirky/vmlinuz root=PARTUUID=000dd6f8-03 rootwait rw
  
title Quirky 7.1 (full install on USB stick)
   uuid EC89-968C
  kernel /quirky/vmlinuz root=PARTUUID=9adad0e4-02 rootwait rw
  
# Frugal installed Puppy
title Puppy slacko 5.6 (sda2/puppy)
  uuid EC89-968C
  kernel /puppy/vmlinuz   psubdir=puppy pmedia=atahd pfix=fsck
  initrd /puppy/initrd.gz

#Android
title Android 4.4 ( sda2/android-4.4-r3 )
	uuid EC89-968C
	kernel /android-4.4-r3/kernel root=/dev/sda2 androidboot.hardware=android_x86 video=-16 SRC=/android-4.4-r3
	initrd /android-4.4-r3/initrd.img 

# Windows
title Windows
  uuid 2CECB178ECB13CC0
  chainloader /ntldr

# Advanced Menu
title Advanced menu
  configfile /menu-advanced.lst
  commandline

Note I have now 3 ways to boot the USB stick :
- Bios booting menu
- entry 2 in the menu
- advanced menu
!!!

Still impossible to boot from SDcard (not recognized by Bios)