DeltaChat running on mobian (PineTab, PinePhone)

Following your link I see:

kdeltachat: unstable-2021-07-17 -> unstable-2021-08-02

If I make a reinstall with nix-env -i kdeltachat-unstable the message is still:

replacing old kdeltachat-unstable-2021-06-14
installing kdeltachat-unstable-2021-06-14

So I don’t even get version 2021-07-17

Oops, I forgot that you have to do nix-channel --update before running nix-env -u --always. It’s analogous to running apt update before apt upgrade.

Thanks! Now I have version 2021-07-17 running.
One remark regarding pictures, the width is not fitting anymore holding the phone in portrait mode. And portrait pictures are cut in the upper and lower part (I hope you understand). In the example the picture of the lake goes much more to the right, top and button. So I know in kdeltachat, that there is a picture, but I have to look at it in my email program. In the version 2021-06-14 the picture width has fit to the screen width.
deltachat-red

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Thanks for adding “New Chat” page! Finally I have the new version running on my PinePhone. If I use the “New Chat” button I come to a selection of email addresses. The suggestions seam arbitrary to me and I did not find out from which address book they result. Is there a field, where I can enter an email address manually, if the address I am looking for is not in the suggestions?

Just stumbled upon this post: arbocenc: "#DeltaChat desktop (using #flatpak) runs very wel…" - Todon.nl

Seems there is a flatpak available!

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I installed it right now and the flatpak is also running on my PinePhone!
Thanks for the note.

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Hey, is your project still active?

I do not develop ~link2xt/kdeltachat - DeltaChat client built with Kirigami - sourcehut git further currently. I would like to wait until kf6 hits Arch Linux repos and then port it to Qt 6 and Kirigami 6.

There is also a fork with notifications that should be ported to mainline: GitHub - eerielili/kdeltachat: Personal branch for kdeltachat with some added functionnalities

There is an actively developed lk108/deltatouch: Messaging app for Ubuntu Touch, powered by deltachat-core - Codeberg.org but it uses Ubuntu Touch Lomiri components rather than Kirigami so probably not portable to non-ubuntu touch Linux phones.

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@Marko I don’t want to ignite too much hope, but I recently got myself a second-hand phone and installed mobian on it…

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While sourcehut is down, I have set up a mirror at codeberg: https://codeberg.org/link2xt/kdeltachat

I also fixed compilation with the new core and added one commit to prepare for Kirigami 6.

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DeltaTouch can run on Mobian and Droidian now. Some things (audio playback + recording, translations, …?) don’t work, and it’s not properly packaged yet. If you want to tinker with it, check out the installation howto.

Feedback and help with packaging welcome.

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I tried it on a fresh Mobian install and I’m sorry to say it did not work: all I managed was a blank “DeltaTouch” icon in the apps tray. Since the commands were rather a lot to type into a phone, I shoved them into a script (which I have renamed “.txt” instead of “.sh” so I can upload it):
deltatouch_installation_script.txt (1.5 KB)
Please let me know if you see what I’m getting wrong.

As this is currently just a hacky way to make it work, everything is installed into ${HOME}/bin/deltatouch except for the desktop file and the startup script. However, the sed line your script uses uname -n which gives the hostname instead of your username, so check the paths in deltatouch.desktop and dt.sh, they may not point to your home dir.

In your script, you could maybe use
eval sed -i 's:/home/droidian:${HOME}:g' ./dt.sh ./deltatouch.desktop
instead.

At another point, your script uses ${SUDO_USER} to get the username, but this var is not set on my mobian install. What is its value on your setup? And why not use
binpath=${HOME}/bin/deltatouch
instead?

If it still doesn’t work, we can figure it out offline, if you want to.

As superuser, “echo ${SUDO_USER}” gives me “mobian”.
“uname -n” gives me “mobian”, and “${HOME}” gives me the directory /home/mobian, unless I am superuser, in which case I get /root (that’s why I didn’t use “$HOME”).

It seems to install in /home/mobian/bin/deltatouch.

My dt.sh reads:

#!/bin/sh
env OPEN_OSK_VIA_DBUS=1 QML2_IMPORT_PATH=/home/mobian/bin/deltatouch/lib/aarch64-linux-gnu LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/home/mobian/bin/deltatouch/lib/aarch64-linux-gnu /home/mobian/bin/deltatouch/deltatouch $@

and my deltatouch.desktop file reads:

[Desktop Entry]
X-Desktop-File-Install-Version=0.11
Name=DeltaTouch
Comment=Messaging app based on deltachat-core-rust
Exec=/usr/local/bin/dt.sh %U
Icon=/home/mobian/bin/deltatouch/assets/logo.svg
Terminal=false
Type=Application
X-Purism-FormFactor=Workstation;Mobile;
Categories=Mobile
MimeType=application/x-webxdc;x-scheme-handler/openpgp4fpr;x-scheme-handler/dcaccount;x-scheme-handler/dclogin;x-scheme-handler/mailto;
X-GNOME-UsesNotifications=true

I’m quite happy to try and sort it out here, but I’m afraid I’ll only be intermittently able to work on it.

Yes, you’re right, if your hostname is the same as the username, it will give the correct result. Your dt.sh and desktop file look ok.

Ok, makes sense. However, the corresponding line in your script does not invoke sudo. Are you executing the whole script with sudo?

What happens if you execute /usr/local/bin/dt.sh in the terminal? It should say

Checking if another instance is already running…
…no, continuing

If it doesn’t, can you please share the output?

If it does, can you please check if /home/mobian/.cache/deltatouch.lotharketterer/logfile.txt exists and share it?

I have had to run the script with sudo, or at the su prompt obtained with “sudo su”. If I don’t, permission is denied to run sudo.

> sudo /usr/local/bin/dt.sh
Checking if another instance is already running...
...yes, checking if arguments need to be sent...
>

/home/mobian/.cache exists, but nothing below that.

I’m afraid I don’t fully understand. You mean you had to run your installation script with sudo? Or dt.sh?

If you ran the installation script with sudo, then the permissions for ~/bin/deltatouch and everything below are off. Remove the deltatouch dir recursively and execute

mkdir -p ~/bin/deltatouch
dpkg -x ./deltatouch.lotharketterer_1.10.2_$(dpkg --print-architecture).click ~/bin/deltatouch

without sudo.

If that doesn’t help, then the permissions of `/usr/local/bin/dh.sh might be incorrect.

Of course that’s it. That does indeed work; prefacing the mkdir and dpkg lines in the script with sudo -u ${SUDO_USER} also works.

No idea why I didn’t spot that; I suspected it was a permissions problem, and obviously since I’d roughly converted the instructions into a script without bothering to switch the sudo that was where the problem was; I should have taken the time to do it properly, it would have saved us both a lot of time. Thank you for helping me out of my stupidity.

For the reference of anyone who’s done something similar, I had to manually remove the directory, including running sudo rmdir /home/${SUDO_USER}/bin/, because the bin folder had the wrong permissions too.

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No problem at all, very happy it works now!