Least-hassle method of getting a usable Web browser + telephony support while GPRS is enabled?

[Al Johnson]

On Thursday 17 December 2009, Brolin Empey wrote:
> 2009/12/16 Al Johnson <openmoko at mazikeen.demon.co.uk>
> 
> > On Thursday 17 December 2009, Brolin Empey wrote:
> > > Hello list,
> > >
> > > I am using QtMoko v14.  AFAIK, QtMoko does not support GSM
> > > multiplexing, which means even if I had a working and usable Web
> > > browser for QtMoko, I could not use telephony functionality, such as
> > > making and receiving phone calls, while GPRS is enabled.  If I wanted
> > > to have Internet access on my FreeRunner, what is the least-hassle
> > > method of getting a usable Web
> >
> > browser
> >
> > > + telephony and SMS support while GPRS is enabled?  Am I better off
> >
> > finding
> >
> > > a usable proprietary phone?
> >
> > Since you've already got the phone you may as well give the other
> > firmware options a try. We keep finding people have different definitions
> > of 'usable'
> > so you'll have to see what suits you.
> >
> > SHR should be easy to try, and is supposed to do everything you want.
> > There's
> > a GUI for the GPRS config. It has multiplexing so GPRS, SMS and telephony
> > should work together (I say should as I haven't tried GPRS recently.)
> > Midori
> > might be a suitable browser, although there is a problematic interaction
> > between the illume keyboard and midori's address autocompletion at the
> > moment.
> >
> > I have already tried the Om2008.8 (?) which was preinstalled on my
> 
> FreeRunner, Om2009 (completely unusable because the GUI kept becoming
> unresponsive), SHR-U (version 080808 or 090808?  I can find out which
> version I tried when I am home tonight.

That's a long way out of date!

> It was less unusable than Om2009
> but still unusable because I could not set the clock to the correct date
>  and time,

By default this is picked up automatically (network, gps, ntp), but you can 
disable some or all of these and set it manually if you want.

>  all of my SMS messages had the same incorrect date and time, the
>  text input did not work reliably,

date and time show correctly here. Matching names to numbers on the message 
app can be slow though.

>  it used crappy Busybox instead of GNU
>  userland (I know I could probably replace Busybox with GNU userland, but
>  doing so requires a usable ssh connection.)

still uses busybox by default, but with openssh in place of dropbear. You need 
to set a password or openssh will refuse the connection.

>  , and I could not even get a
>  usable ssh connection to SHR-U because I could not get bridging nor
>  routing working on Ubuntu and the ssh session from Cygwin on Windows Vista
>  was very slow and kept disconnecting.

I've not tried networking on ubuntu or vista so I can't comment, but bridging 
on fedora just works like any other bridge. It behaves the same way whichever 
distro I have on the moko (except android).

>  I had the base or tiny version of
>  SHR (I forgot what it was called, but I can find out when I am at home
>  tonight.), which had very few apps, but I could not upgrade to the full
>  version because I did not have a usable ssh connection.), and finally
>  QtMoko, which still has issues but is by far the most usable distro I have
>  tried.  I could try SHR again, but my first impression of SHR was very
>  poor because I do not understand how they could release such a broken
>  image. 

shr-unstable is just that, and breakages happen. The images are just nightly 
builds that have nominally succeeded, not a release that's supposed to be bug-
free. The recently released shr-testing is intended to avoid the sort of 
failures you can get in unstable, but it takes a little while for bug fixes to 
trickle down from unstable. 

>  If I try another distro, it has to be able to install to and run
>  from a MicroSD(HC) card because I need to keep my working QtMoko
>  installation in my onboard NAND.

I'm running shr-u (among others) from uSD. Just make an ext3 filesystem on a 
spare partition and untar the tar.gz image to it. I assume you know how to 
multiboot already...

>  I want to be able to connect my
>  FreeRunner directly to an Ethernet LAN instead of having to use bridging
>  and/or routing on a PC.  I already have a USB → Ethernet adapter, but I am
>  still waiting for my DealExtreme orders to arrive (it is taking weeks. :/)
>  so I can use my FreeRunner as a USB Host instead of only as a USB Device. 
>  If I could connect my FreeRunner directly to my Ethernet LAN, then it does
>  not matter if I cannot get a usable ssh connection to SHR-U via USB
>  networking, but such a connection should still work because it works fine
>  with QtMoko.

The Settings app has a switch for USB host/device mode. So long as the kernel 
module is present it should work, but I've never tried a USB ethernet adapter 
with it.