So as planet no provide Linux only firmware you have to do it by yourself.
First of all you need to get a firmware with only one linux partition:
- Go here : http://support.planetcom.co.uk/partitionTool.html
- Select gemini version (4G or wifi)
- Boot 1 : select Sailfish (no this is not an error)
- Reserve all partition to linux
- Download scatter file
- Download base firmware
Next we need a standard Debian image:
- Boot 1 : select android standard
- Boot 2 : select debian
- Reserve partition for debian & android (exact sizes doesn't matter)
- Download aditional debian firmware
At this you have 3 files :
- Scatter file for Sailfish OS
- Base firmware
- Debian firmware
Create a folder:
- Unzip base firmware inside
- Unzip debian inside
- Copy scatter file inside
Now you have to replace all sailfishos_boot.img to debian_boot.img in the scatter file. There is a simple perl oneliner to do it:
perl -p -i -e "s/sailfishos_boot/debian_boot/g" Gemini_x25_x27_LinuxOnly.txt
- Download FlashTool
wget http://support.planetcom.co.uk/download/FlashToolLinux.tgz
- Install dependecies
sudo apt install libjpeg62 libaudio2
- Setup Udev rules
sudo vim /etc/udev/rules.d/20-mm-blacklist-mtk.rules
ATTRS{idVendor}=="0e8d", ENV{ID_MM_DEVICE_IGNORE}="1"
ATTRS{idVendor}=="6000", ENV{ID_MM_DEVICE_IGNORE}="1"
- Restart Udev
sudo service udev restart
- Unpack and run FlashTool
tar -zxvf FlashToolLinux.tgz
cd FlashToolLinux
sudo ./flash_tool.sh
- Go to "Download" tab
- Download-Agent : should be set to the file MTK_AllInOne_DA.bin (which is located in the FlashToolWindows or FlashToolLinux folder).
- Scatter loading file : choose the scatter file that you have modifyed just before
All the files in colums must be checked and location not empty
- Go to Readback tab
- Click "Add" button. A row will appear in the table under.
- Click "Read Back" button connect your PC to the left end USB-C port on your Gemini and restart the Gemini. Once booted, the flash tool will detect the unit and will write the NVRAM partition on a file on your hard disk called NVRAM0. Ithink it's a good idea to keep this file as a backup, together with the customised Scatter file.
- Select "Download" tab.
- In the drop-down list select "Firmware Upgrade" option
- Click big "Download" button
- Connect your PC to the left end USB-C port on your Gemini and restart the Gemini. Once booting, the flash tool will detect the unit and will start flashing the device with the selected firmware.
- Wait the end of flashing
- Disconnect the Gemini from the PC
- Press esc button a long time, and wainting for the login page
- On login screen enter password gemini under the username
VERY important -> do not make apt update & upgrade before THIS. If not, you will break all the file system.
- Add the repository key
wget http://gemian.thinkglobally.org/archive-key.asc
sudo apt-key add archive-key.asc
- Disable SSL check for gemian.thinkglobally.org In case the Let's Encrypt certificate has expired on 30 September and very old version on OpenSSL in the Stetch apt can't validate the repo certifcate. So you need to disable certificate checking for the repo.
sudo nano /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99disablesslcheck
Acquire::https::gemian.thinkglobally.org::Verify-Host "false";
Acquire::https::gemian.thinkglobally.org::Verify-Peer "false";
- Upgrade the system
sudo apt update
sudo apt install apt-transport-https
sudo apt upgrade
- Edit the apt config :
$ sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list.d/multistrap-debian.list
- Add following to the end:
deb [arch=arm64] http://security.debian.org/debian-security stretch/updates main contrib non-free
deb [arch=arm64] http://http.debian.net/debian stretch-backports main contrib non-free
Since Android is generating a new mac address for your wifi interface at every reboot and Connman is storing the mac address in its services you would need to enter your wifi passwords every time you reboot.
Fortunately there is a way to lock the mac address.
install hexedit: sudo apt install hexedit
sudo hexedit /nvdata/APCFG/APRDEB/WIFI and set a mac address in bytes 04-09 (mind that the base is 0, so it starts at the 5th byte) of the first row (0)
set the i attr on the file: sudo chattr +i /nvdata/APCFG/APRDEB/WIFI
This will lock down the mac address.
You need to install connman-plugin-suspend-wmtwifi to avoid this:
sudo apt install connman-plugin-suspend-wmtwifi
Turns out this plugin just stops the repeated re-connection's to wifi. It still eats lots of battery.
Due to some peculiarity in the system image creation by multistrap our libreoffice installs get their diverts muddled, if you get an issue on upgrading with it complaining about libreoffice do the following:
cd /var/cache/apt/archives
sudo dpkg --force-all -i libreoffice*.deb
This basically forces a reinstall of all the libreoffice debian packages.
sudo apt install i3
sudo apt install fonts-font-awesome libjson-perl
For keyboard that have both Latin and native characters you pick your language variant, eg for Gemini Russia (Cyrillic):
setxkbmap -model planetgemini -layout ru
But there is a bug in symbols mapping, so you need to fix it manually (but maybe fix already in the image):
sudo vim /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/planet_vndr/gemini
Replace word backslash to slash in lines 377 and 388 with:
- key <AC09> { symbols[Group1] = [ Cyrillic_de, Cyrillic_DE, backslash, Lstroke ] };
+ key <AC09> { symbols[Group1] = [ Cyrillic_de, Cyrillic_DE, slash, Lstroke ] };
- key <AC09> { symbols[Group2] = [ l, L, backslash, Lstroke ] };
+ key <AC09> { symbols[Group2] = [ l, L, slash, Lstroke ] };
And second thing with mapping -
You then have two groups working with simultaneous pressing of both left and right shift keys being how you swap between which is the active group.
N.B. In the following map file groups were swapped, so by default you have English layout now.
Let us configure the NTP client to be time synced with the NTP server. For this, you have to install the ntpd daemon on the client machine.
apt-get install ntpdate