Full Circle Magazine FR

My Honor 5C is over two years old and runs Android 7.0, Nougat; it works beautifully. But, having read in the News of Issue 138 that it is now possible to run Ubuntu on your Android telephone, without rooting it first (see page 12 of that issue on “Using UserLAnd”), I decided to try it out. Notice that I am willfully ignoring the old adage ‘If it works, don’t fix it’, although I do hope that, after my trials (in all senses of the term), my phone will still work as well. When I went to the Play Store and typed in Ubuntu, I got a list of possibilities that included Ubuntu for Android, Ubuntu Touch, and Ubuntu Launcher, which proposed, mainly, themes and icons. That being said, Ubuntu for Android proposes a Complete Linux Installer (from Zpwebsites, with 3.8 stars), and Debian noroot (by pelya, with 4.1 stars). Just below that, I found AnLinux: Run Linux on Android without Root Access, from EXA Lab, with 4.3 stars (53 reviews). Hmmm… The last sounds enticing. What about UserLAnd, though? It finally showed up when I searched with “ubuntu os for android no root,” although AnLinux came first on the list. UserLAnd from UserLAnd Teachnologies LLC was well down, but had 4.4 stars, with 84 reviews.

Mon smartphone, un Honor 5C qui a plus de deux ans et tourne sous Android 7.0, Nougat, fonctionne vraiment très bien (malgré le fait qu'il reste à l'EMUI 5.0.3).Toutefois, ayant lu dans les News du numéro 138 qu'il est maintenant possible de faire tourner Ubuntu sur votre télé phone sous Android, sans devoir le rooter (voir la page 12 de ce numéro-là sur « Utilisez UserLAnd »), j'ai décidé de l'essayer. Remarquez que j'ai choisi d'ignorer le vieil adage « le mieux est l'ennemi du bien », en espérant qu'après tous mes essais et difficultés, mon téléphone fonctionnera tout aussi bien.

Quand je suis allée au Play Store et ai saisi Ubuntu dans la zone de recherches, une liste de possibilités comprenant Ubuntu for Android, Ubuntu Touch et Ubuntu Launcher s'est affichée, mais les entrées proposées pour la plupart des thèmes et des icônes. Cela étant dit, la catégorie Ubuntu for Android propose un Complete Linux Installer (de zpwebsites, avec 3,8 étoiles) et Debian noroot (by pelva, avec 4,1 étoiles). Juste en dessous, j'ai trouvé AnLinux : Faites tourner Linux sur Android sans accès à root, d'EXA Lb, avec 4,3 étoiles (et 53 critiques). Cette dernière applic avait l'air très attrayant. Mais quid de UserLAnd ? Il s'est affiché enfin quand j'ai fait une recherche avec les termes « Ubuntu os pour Android no root », bien qu'AnLinux était première sur la liste. UserLAnd de UserLAnd Technologies LLC était beaucoup plus loin, mais avait 4,4 étoiles, avec 84 critiques.

The question in my mind is, Will there be a GUI or will it be “only” the terminal, as is possible in Windows 10? AnLinux says you need Termux (also available on the Play Store) AND you can “even run…Xfce4 Desktop Environment!!!” Back to UserLAnd, which says “Run full Linux distros or specific applications on top of Android.” The pictures do show a fairly normal desktop: The installation is only 2.75 MB and took just a few seconds with normal WiFi. You then get a choice of “Apps” including Ubuntu. I selected Ubuntu, of course, and, when invited to do so, I put in a username and password as well as a VNC password. My telephone now shows that UserLAnd is running a background service and downloading things. The download took about 6 minutes, then the installation began, and, all of a sudden, I found I must download and install bVNC: Secure VNC Viewer (7.22 MB and almost instantaneous to install). But it couldn’t connect at first, and, once it apparently connected, all I had with UserLAnd thus far was a terminal… Into which I typed: sudo apt-get update

Je me demandais alors, Y aura-t-il une interface graphique on est-ce qu'il n'y aura qu'un terminal, comme c'est le cas avec Windows 10 sub-system Linux ? AnLinux dit qu'il faut Termux (disponible sur le Play Store) ET que vous pouvez même « faire tourner … Xfce4 Desktop Environment » !!! De retour sur le descriptif de UserLAnd, qui indique « Faites tourner des distrib. Linux complètes ou des applications précises par-dessus Android. » Il est vrai que les images montrent un bureau tout à fait normal :

L'installation ne fait que 2,75 Mo et son téléchargement et installation n'a nécessité que quelques secondes avec ADSL WiFi. Vous avez alors un choix d'« applis » dont Ubuntu. Bien entendu, j'ai choisi Ubuntu et, à l'invite, j'ai mis un nom d'utilisateur et un mot de passe, ainsi qu'un mot de passe pour VNC. Puis, mon téléphone montrait que UserLAnd faisait tourner un service en arrière-plan et téléchargeait des choses. Le téléchargement a pris environ 6 minutes, et l'installation a démarré quand, tout d'un coup, j'ai lu que je devais télécharger et installer bVNC: Secure VNC Viewer (7,22 Mo avec une installation presqu'instantanée). Mais, tout d'abord, il n'arrivait pas à se connecter et, une fois connecté (apparemment), tout ce que j'avais jusqu'alors avec UserLAnd était un terminal.

Où j'ai tapé :

sudo apt-get update

Now it was getting all kinds of Bionic Beaver files (?) or “ports”! Well, I definitely wanted a GUI, so I typed in “sudo apt-get install xfce” and it didn’t find the package. Next I tried the same thing with “mate”. It told me something like replacing mate with mate-desktop-environment, and then went to work on that. I wasn’t sure I was doing things right, but I did manage to get back into Android when I tried… Now UserLAnd asked me if I wanted to continue with Mate and I said Yes. It kept doing things and I still had access to the telephone… When I woke it up, I had a message “UserLAnd is running a background service.” And then Android also decided to update a few things as well. When I checked again, UserLAnd’s background service had been running for 45 minutes… When it stopped running, I went back and found only a terminal, which didn’t recognize the command “mate”, so I typed “exit” and ended up with nothing but a keyboard, which I found quite daunting. Despite the presence of a “Super” key, I was unable to get the terminal again. However, after I rebooted my telephone, there it was again. I was in my home folder, but would like to get to the desktop environment I installed previously. In the course of my research on doing just that, I came across an interesting article that tells you how to install an X server in the Bash shell you get with Windows Subsystem Linux – for Windows 10, it suggests Xming. https://www.howtogeek.com/261575/how-to-run-graphical-linux-desktop-applications-from-windows-10s-bash-shell/ What I needed, I thought, was an X server for Android. There are even X servers on the Google Play Store. The first on the list is X server from Darkside Technologies Pty Ltd, with 3.9 stars, but there seem to be a few bugs. The second is Xserver XSDL from pelya with 4.3 starts from 831 reviews. I thought I’d try that first. It took about 1 minute to download and install. But it didn’t change anything.

Là, il recevait toutes sortes de fichiers (?) ou « ports » de Bionic Beaver ! Bon, je voulais vraiment une interface graphique et j'ai donc saisi « sudo apt-get install xfce », mais le paquet était introuvable (ma faute !). Ensuite, j'ai essayé la même chose avec « mate » et il m'a dit qu'il replaçait mate avec mate-desktop-environment et a commencé à travailler. Je n'étais pas certaine de faire les choses comme il fallait, mais j'ai réussi à retourner sous Android quand j'ai essayé. UserLAnd m'a demandé si je voulais continuer avec Mate et j'ai répondu Oui. Il continuait à travailler et moi, j'avais toujours accès au téléphone.

Quand je l'ai réveillé, j'avais le message « UserLAnd fait tourner un service en arrière-plan. » C'est alors que Android a décidé de mettre quelques applis à jour aussi. Quand j'ai vérifié à nouveau, le service en arrière-plan de UserLAnd tournait depuis 45 minutes…

Quand il avait terminé, j'y suis retournée pour trouver uniquement un terminal qui n'a pas reconnu « mate » comme commande. J'ai donc tapé « exit ». Le résultat n'était qu'un clavier, ce que je trouvais très décourageant. Malgré la présence d'une touche Super, je n'arrivais pas à avoir le terminal à nouveau, avant d'avoir redémarré le téléphone. J'étais dans mon dossier /home, mais j'aurais voulu pouvoir démarrer l'environnement de bureau qu' j'avais installé auparavant. En faisant des recherches sur comment faire cela, j'ai trouvé par hasard un article intéressant sur comment installer un serveur X dans le shell Bash que vous avez avec Windows Subsystem Linux - pour Windows 10, il suggère Xming. https://www.howtogeek.com/261575/how-to-run-graphical-linux-desktop-applications-from-windows-10s-bash-shell/ Il me semblait alors que j'avais éventuellement besoin d'un serveur X pour Android.

Le Play Store propose même des serveurs X. Le premier sur la liste est X server de Darkside Technologies Pty Lts, avec 3,9 étoiles, mais il paraissait qu'il y avait quelques bugs. Le seconde est Xserver XSDL de pelva avec 4,3 étoiles et 831 critiques. C'est celui que j'allais essayer : environ une minute pour le téléchargement et l'installation. Mais cela n'a rien changé.

Back in Bash, in my home directory (~) I tried “dir”, but there was nothing in it except my name. So I went into “/” and, with “dir”, found bin, data, etc, host-rootfs, media, opt, root, sys, usr, boot, dev, home, lib, mnt, proc, run, sdcard, support, tmp, var. I then went to /usr and saw that it contains bin games include lib, local, sbin, share, and src. I then decided to uninstall everything and try again another day. The whole thing was using up internal space and a lot of my phone’s RAM. Would it be worth it? I contacted UserLAnd directly and got some good tips from Corbin – to whom I owe very sincere thanks – as well as the URL of a GitHub page where you can report issues (and see how those that have been resolved were). So I was ready to try again… This time, I downloaded an Xserver AND bVNC before downloading UserLAnd. But my next try yielded no better results, so I wrote another email, this time to support@userland.tech, the address I suddenly saw at the bottom of the ratings on Google Play. Still, it was Corbin who answered my precise questions promptly and efficiently, suggesting lxde-core. I learned, for example, that Android can kill Background Services (which is what the install of lxde-core was) for lack of memory and that was probably why the download had stopped when I received an SMS. When I started up UserLAnd again, though, and typed in ‘sudo apt-get install lxde-core’ again, I saw that I could simply continue the download and was given the code to do so. Tip: CLEAR YOUR MEMORY on Android before starting with UserLAnd and bVNC.

Despite doing lots of research on Google and the Ubuntu Forums, I couldn’t find how to get a terminal again, once I’d exited the first, without rebooting the phone – until Corbin gave me the answer: “You can long-press on the Ubuntu app in UserLAnd and kill it, and then start it again by clicking on it.” He also told me that, because I was in VNC mode I should be able to reach the lxde desktop with a long-press – the equivalent of a right-click – on the App (in the UserLAnd menu, I think) to “Stop App” and then, when I started it again with a simple press/click, it should just launch into lxde. Once I had gotten this helpful advice, I was ready to try again. I uninstalled both UserLAnd and bVNC, I wiped the memory of my phone and even turned it off. I put my laptop on a cable connection to the Net so nothing, other than my new installs, would be using the WiFi. Then I turned my phone on again and installed UserLAnd, getting bVNC only when UserLAnd asked that I do so. I connected to Ubuntu as AuntieE and found myself in the terminal again (AuntieE@localhost). I installed lxde-core, this time with no interruptions. I stopped the app and, when I started it again, I could see it taking longer than usual and was most optimistic about my landing on the lxde desktop, but no. At various times, I would get either of these two message errors, saying, basically, that bVNC couldn’t connect. But, when I tried again, despite the message, whichever it was, there was the Terminal with AuntieE@localhost, but not the desktop, although I know it’s installed. I think I can avoid disturbing Corbin further until I have written an email to the contact for bVNC (iiordanov@gmail.com) to ask him/her for suggestions, because I think it must be a problem of connecting – I have a Freebox… On the other hand, my phone has no firewall and bVNC never asked me for the WiFi password. I do have AVAST on the phone. Apparently, some people have had problems with Avast, others have had none, so, just in case, I uninstalled it, but that didn’t change anything. And neither did re-installing it as had been the case for some people.

While I waited for iiordanov to answer my email (to date, he or she still hasn’t), I thought I’d see about starting lxde from the command-line, rather than by closing it in UserLAnd and opening it again (since that didn’t work). Today, I updated and upgraded my Ubuntu, then began work on lxde, first with the help of this site, by Guillermo Garron https://www.garron.me/en/go2linux/how-to-install-startx.html, written in 2008. Using his information, I did sudo apt install xinit, then installed nano with which I made the .xinitrc file with just one line : exec start lxde. But when I typed in startx again, the connection to the X server was refused. Now I’m using the help of a different site, https://superuser.com/questions/671169/starting-and-stopping-x11-and-lxde-from-command-line, which is newer – 2013, revised in 2015. I checked and made sure that lightdm actually exists in my file system: /etc/init.d/lightdm start. It does exist, but in /etc/,there is no folder for init.d. So I cd’ed to /etc/, did sudo lightdm start and got this error message (see below). Note that lightdm IS present in the etc folder. The message is the same received by someone with Ubuntu in a VM on Windows XP, although I don’t get more info about the system bus, as that person did. The source for that is at: https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/7uh0kz/ubuntu_is_failing_to_boot_after_an_xp_virtual/ with a similar reference (from the same person, I’d guess) here: https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/ubuntu-is-failing-to-boot-after-an-xp-virtual-machine-crashed-my-system-4175622830/

Could it be a question of the available RAM on my telephone? (Or is the RAM in bVNC what matters?) I have 3.64 GB free in the internal memory and 17.47 GB on the SD Card. There are a total of 1.7 GB of RAM, with only 538 MB free. And that’s not much! Android OS itself uses 743 MB. Even after “freeing RAM” with Avast, there are still only 538 MB free. I just forced Avast to stop and will now do a complete reboot. And now I have only 41 MB more, or 579 MB of available RAM. By that time, I’d registered on GitHub and put an “issue” on the UserLAnd page (https://github.com/CypherpunkArmory/UserLAnd/issues/) that pretty much uses the above information. Except that, when I read through the list of already published issues, I saw that some people succeeded in connecting to a desktop with SSH. I also saw that other people had done better with VNC’s other than bVNC. After reading about SSH, I feel truly out of my depth. I guess the phone itself would be the client and UserLAnd Ubuntu, the server, but I don’t understand how to configure them. I installed ConnectBot (which is what UserLAnd Ubuntu took me to as soon as I selected SSH instead of VNC in the App Info section available with a right-click), and it does allow for password authentication, rather than worrying about public and private keys. For the time being however, SSH in command-line is more than I can handle, all the moreso that I believe you need a keyboard with an Alt button on your phone to be able to use it. Because of those complications, I went back to VNC with UserLAnd intending to uninstall bVNC and try the other VNC Viewers one after another!

The next day, I proceeded with uninstalling bVNC as planned and installed VNC Viewer instead. But when I tried to start Ubuntu in UserLAnd, it requested bVNC anyway. I then uninstalled UserLAnd and reinstalled it, but, even with VNC Viewer, it insisted on bVNC. So I went with bVNC. Now, I’ve gotten to Bash and am doing apt install lxde-core. I believe that UserLAnd was updated; at any rate, there was something new that time: the titles of the downloads were color-coded a fluorescent yellow with progress information given to the left and the Progress information for the actual installation was highlighted in green. I was hopeful … Another positive point was that I got a phonecall while lxde was installing AND the UserLAnd background service was NOT interrupted. But I had been too hopeful: back in the UserLAnd app, I stopped the Ubuntu app. Then I started again (in other words, after the install, I restarted the “computer,” hoping to reach the desktop), only to get another “Error! Connection failed…” Still, generally speaking, since that latest install, the shell itself was working better, I think. I just tried sudo lightdm start again, but got the same message “Failed to get system bus: Could not connect: No such file or directory.” The bottom line seems to be that, when bVNC refuses to connect to the desktop, I can still get into the terminal. Another day, another try : no comments on GitHub about my issue, SO I decided to install AnLinux and give that a try. It works with Termux and once I’d installed that and opened AnLinux, it took me through the process of, first, creating a shell (as root, by the way – no need of sudo), then of creating an Ubuntu distrib. It recommended xfce4, so that’s what I chose. Once Termux had done its stuff and also had me select a language and the disposition of my keyboard (which took a while and necessitated entering the same information several times), it asked for a password, which I gave and verified, and then told me that xfce4 was running and that the way to get it to stop was to run vncserver-stop. It told me that I could use the server I wished (bVNC, what else?) and told me the port I should connect on. I put that in the port zone of bVNC, pressed on Connect and …..There I was, still as root, on a full desktop! I must admit that it was definitely easier, as well as more successful, than UserLAnd had been thus far.

I clicked on the default config, checked what was available (nothing, really, beyond a terminal), admired the dock at the bottom of the screen, and went back to the home screen on my telephone. Obviously, Termux must have something going for it. And, just as obviously, using it, plus AnLinux to get things started, plus bVNC to connect to the desktop is, in a way, more complicated than just UserLAnd… In addition, apparently – although I may have done something wrong – when I went to Termux today and typed in vncserver-start, the command was not found. Then in AnLinux, the only option I had, as far as I could see, was to go through the process another time, which, on a daily basis would not be ideal. So, the next day, I started over again with UserLAnd and bVNC and tried installing the xfce4 desktop instead of lxde. Perhaps that would solve (what I thought might be) my memory problems. Something interesting showed up: with this new install of UserLAnd, the choice of full distributions is now between Debian, Kali and Ubuntu. Having chosen the latter, I put in my username and password, and a password for the VNC, and then, as before, it fetched everything necessary for the shell. Once in the shell, I typed in sudo apt-get install xfce4. And waited. At one point, I caught a glimpse of a problem with a and/or the system bus, which made me think of the message I had gotten when I tried to start lightdm in lxde from the terminal. So, I was doubtful. As per Corbin’s instructions, I stopped the App in UserLAnd, then started it again. Oh dear: I got a warning Could not connect! Acknowledge, which I did, then clicked on Ubuntu in UserLAnd, expecting to see a terminal. BUT, I got the xfce4 desktop with AuntieE@localhost in the Xterm. I was thrilled!

Here’s a quick recap : • Install UserLAnd from the Play Store and open it. • If the Ubuntu distribution automatically sends you to SSH, right-click the title (long press), and, in App Info, choose VNC. • Give your username and password, plus a password (which must be between 6 and 8 characters) for the VNC server. • UserLAnd will automatically invite you to download bVNC. Start it and provide the same password again. • Go back to UserLAnd and restart Ubuntu. In the resulting terminal, type in ‘sudo apt-get install xfce4’ and wait, roughly half an hour, while it works. • Return to UserLAnd, right-click the Ubuntu app and click on Stop App. • Clear your memory of whatever’s working (I’m not absolutely certain this is necessary). • Open UserLAnd and click on Ubuntu. When you do, you may see what looks like the same-ol’, same-ol’ UserLAnd terminal. But if you wait a couple of seconds, you will find yourself in xfce4.

I chose the default config and moved up in the screen and found that AuntieE was connected to the Xterminal (with Applications available at the top of the screen)!!! It seems that it MAY HAVE BEEN a problem of memory and NOT a problem with Huawei/Honor after all. What is more, my access to the desktop seems permanent. All it takes is a slight wait – even turning the phone off and on again. My efforts have paid off. Perhaps my own experience will help those of you who, like me, proceed by trial and error, to get UserLAnd Ubuntu on your phone with a minimum of hassle. Resources: https://github.com/CypherpunkArmory/UserLAnd/issues/ This is the place to go for fast and efficient answers to your questions. You can also make suggestions or requests here. support@userland.tech Additional information from Corbin: UserLAnd is now on f-droid!