Rooting your Gemini PDA

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I recently got a Gemini PDA (WiFi). To run rooted Android and Linux (dual boot) I did the following:

  1. Followed the details here.
  2. Downloaded & unzipped Windows Flashing Tool
  3. Downloaded & installed Windows Drivers
  4. Chose my Partition setup here then downloaded
    1. Scatter File
    2. Base Firmware (ie Android)
    3. Linux Firmware
  5. Unzipped both firmwares into a dir & put scatter file in there
  6. Connected Gemini powered off
  7. Started flashing tool, selected scatter file (following this guide)
  8. Chose “Firmware Upgrade” & “Download”
  9. Powered Gemini on
  10. Waited. First you get a fast red progress bar (partitioning?). Then you get two slow yellow progress bars (presumably installing each OS). In total the process took 35-45 minutes.
    Update: on a recent install (see step 11) this was much quicker, a couple of minutes.
  11. Powered on Gemini into Android (my default). To get “proper” root I installed Magisk Manager from here.
    WARNING: latest Magisk Manager put my Gemini into a boot loop requiring firmware reinstall – so don’t update to latest version & allow it to rebuild!

Note I skipped backing up the NVRAM. You probably shouldn’t do that.

Then post-install I installed Linux Deploy from the play store, Arch Linux under that (into an ext4 partition on my SD card) & termux as a terminal into it.

 

Arch Linux on aarch64 gpg keys

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If you have an issue with gpg verification of packages the instructions are slightly different to recover as the signing keys are different:

pacman-key --init
pacman-key --populate archlinuxarm

This is if you get errors like:

error: mutt: signature from "Arch Linux ARM Build System <builder@archlinuxarm.org>" is unknown trust
:: File /var/cache/pacman/pkg/mutt-1.10.0-1-aarch64.pkg.tar.xz is corrupted (invalid or corrupted package (PGP signature)).
Do you want to delete it? [Y/n] y
error: failed to commit transaction (invalid or corrupted package (PGP signature))
Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.

Build emacs 25 rpm for redhat / centos 7

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This is for the console only (no graphical xwindows) version. Installs into /opt/emacs253 so can run side-by-side with system emacs.

  • # Download emacs tarball & untar
  • ./configure --prefix=/opt/emacs253 --with-gif=no --with-tiff=no --with-x-toolkit=no \

--with-xpm=no --with-jpeg=no --with-png=no
  • # install any dependencies & build

make

make DESTDIR=/tmp/emacs install
  • # Install fpm (gem install fpm) to build package

fpm -s dir -t rpm -C /tmp/emacs --name emacs25 --version 25.3 --iteration 1 --description "emacs 25.3"
  • rm -rf /tmp/emacs

					

	
	
	



				
					


				
					


				
					


	


		
gsconnect – native kdeconnect for gnome


				

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https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1319/gsconnect/ is a fantastic implementation of kdeconnect which allows you interface with your android phone from your linux desktop.


I had some issues configuring it on Fedora as I was previously using kdeconnectd so gsconnect defaulted to the next available port (1717).


To resolve this I removed kdeconnectd (yum remove), uninstalled gsconnect (rm -rf ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/gsconnect@andyholmes.github.io), wiped the prefs (dconf reset -f /org/gnome/shell/extensions/gsconnect/)  and then reinstalled gsconnect.


Test it’s listening on 1716:


lsof -Pi | grep 171


And sync with kdeconnect android app.


(Also ensure your linux machine isn’t firewalling the ports).

					

	
	
	



				
					


				
					


	


		
Another useful emacs package: crux


				

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Contains various helper functions including crux-duplicate-and-comment-current-line-or-region for when you want to rework a line of code but keep the original. I’ve added these shortcuts:


;; crux
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c I") #'crux-find-user-init-file)
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c r") #'crux-rename-file-and-buffer)
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c d") #'crux-duplicate-current-line-or-region)
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c M-d") #'crux-duplicate-and-comment-current-line-or-region)
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c n") #'crux-cleanup-buffer-or-region)