Sailfish 4.0.1.48 and microG

I confer the opposite. MicroG failed to function correctly on a freshly flashed 3.4.0.24, with the systems working after dealing with signature spoofing (both with the img patching method and the symlink) but never allowing me to add an account or use SafetyNet, and many programs still weren’t registering with GCM. After updating to 4.0, MicroG SafetyNet started working, and I was able to add not one but two Google accounts, and all applications had both working GCM and notifications.

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Just in case it’s for someone’s benefit: I had issues with Android apps relying on Google Play Services after updating my XA2 from 3.4 to 4.

I could restore functionality with opengapps using this guide but adapting to Android 9.0 instead of 8.1. My whole story you can find here.

cheers

Hi,
I also had issues with Whatsapp after updating my XA2 with Gms to 4.0.
After failing to successfully follow the guide mentioned by coco, I decided to re-flash my XA2 with a fresh 4.0 install.
I was impressed to find out Whatsapp now works out of the (store) box, as all the Android I use. Not need for third party softs anymore !

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Yes, Whatsapp (and Android apps mostly) do work on Xperia 10 and XA2 without MicroG or other helpers.
I have never used Google services or MicroG.

Working for me after 4.0 update. I don’t use Whatsapp, though, but other GServices apps working fine…

Please be weary that this guide requires you to unpack and repack your system.img file. Doing so may lead to losing some selinux capabilities stored in the xattr (extended attribute). Without these capabilities, your android ends up being broken in subtle ways that are not easy to spot (e.g.: logcat doesn’t work anymore).

I would strongly suggest that you consider installing microG instead(*) as that one doesn’t necessarily requires modifying the system.img partition (only if some of your app require the older mapsv1 API). You can mostly get by simply by using the “spoofing signature” feature of AlienDavlik introduced a few SFOS versions ago.

If you decide to modify your system.img any way, I would very strongly suggest that you rely on an approach that doesn’t rely on unpack system.img but loop mounting it instead (see my example for mapsv1).

I was pleasantly surprised that with Jolla’s latest SFOS and microG’s latest surprise, even my bank’s PhotoTAN works correctly. (But the “background android apps grab the camera and do not release it” bug is still present every now and then).


(*) - speaking of which: dear Jolla, you promised that you’re going to transfer the howto from the old askbot to the new forum. Are you going to do it? I think mine might be still relevant but myself am busy fighting some pandemic (you might have heard about) in my day job so I don’t have time to port it to the new forum.

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Since Sailfish 3.4 I had problems with micoG. In Salifish 3.3 everthing including cloud messaging was working very well. My hope was, that the update to 4.0 will solve the problem, but this was not the case. So I read all the comments hear… At the end I had a deeper look at the micoG settings app. Out of some reason the “google device registration” was disabled. So cloud messaging couldn’t work. So I activated device registration rebooted the os. It took few minutes (!!) until android app support was running. But after this I could activate google cloud messaging… After next reboot android app support started fast as normal (without delay of minutes). I started apps using cloud messaging and they asked for permission to use the service.
So try to play around with your settings. Maybe this solves your problem to…

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Forgive me, ultimately, before installing any Android app, you need to give these commands:
devel-su
[Type your password]
ln -s / home / defaultuser / home / nemo
and then signature spoofing will work on Kali too?

Thanks for this hint. But…
In what folder do I have to set this link? In / or in /home/nemo ?
Since there are a lot of blanks in the command it is not quite clear what is the name of the link and what is the path.
Is it probably
ln -s /home/defaultuser/home nemo
or something else?
It would be very nice of you if you could tell me the correct command. Thank you very much in advance.
Best regards, Uwe.

Hello,
of course! And sorry for the bad writing!
So, the command I used was:
devel-su
[Type your password]
ln -s /home/defaultuser /home/nemo

Thank you very much! In the meantime I also found out that the command has to be like you said. (I was totally wrong…)
But the problem is that on my SFOS 4.0.1.48 (XA2) there is no defaultuser in folder /home. Is this correct?

After entering of devel-su I’m in folder /home/nemo. Applying the ln-command it creates a sym-link defaultuser in folder /home/nemo which points to /home/nemo.
But after restarting aliendalvik the Signature Spoofing Checker starts up but closes itself after some seconds without any output.
What I’m also wondering about is that Aliendalvik Control (9.3.1-1) looks different from earlier versions (e.g. no settings button)…

Best regards, Uwe.

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And what, imagine! Well you solved it! :smiley:
I don’t know what to tell you, I’m sorry: in my XA2 (even after several clean installations yes Sailfish) I always found defaultuser in home …
As for Aliendalvik Control, Coderus is working on it together with Patchmanager, still they don’t work on Sailfish 4.

Thanks for answering.
But I’m a bit confused. I have the feeling I did’nt solve it … :frowning:

Is your defaultuser in /home just a (empty?) file or is it a folder?

Best regards, Uwe.

Hello,
I’m sorry but I just don’t remember what was in defaultuser before I created the symbolic link with nemo. :pensive:

As I said above, the proper way to fix the issue is this one:

However, if you are still nemo, and not defaultuser, you are not affected by this particular issue.
Sounds like @uwelabs is nemo? In that case there must be something else not working with the microG install or spoofing settings.

Thank you very much for your hints.
On an earlier SFOS version I used https://together.jolla.com/question/209300/how-to-microg-in-sfos-31/?sort=votes&answer=209744#post-id-209744
to install microG.
I don’t know if this is also valid for 4.0.1.48?

In AlienDalvik-Control (9.3.1-1) on SFOS 4.0.1.48 there is no settings button. So I used
apkd-launcher com.android.settings
to check the settings and all looked good.

Now I found [3.4.0.24] Signature spoofing doesn't work on a freshly flashed xperia 10 plus where Sthocs explains the changing of /usr/sbin/alien-generate-properties.sh in line 133:
export XDG_CONFIG_HOME=/home/$ALIEN_USER/.config
I did this.
But after restarting aliendalvik the Spoofing Checker still vanishes after some seconds without giving any output. So it’s nor clear for me if it works or not.
Best regards, Uwe.

To be sure to understand:

  • You have FakeStore and MicroG Services Core enabled in the enable system package replacement subsection of Android Settings
  • You have the line 133 of alien-generate-properties.sh that has $ALIEN_USER instead of nemo

Then, did you try to simply use the Self Checker of MicroG Settings? I didn’t install Signature Spoofing Checker personally, and it’s enough to work well with apps that need Play Services.

Excuse my late answer.
Yes I have done all that.
But in the Self.-Check not all check boxes are set. For those which are not set it is not possible to set them. (On my wife’s XA2 all checkboxes are set, although I did all the same things as with my XA2.)
I wonder if I shoud uninstall all related microG apks…?.. The microG Service Core app has a version number 2.8… At https://microg.org/download.html there are much newer files. Is it save to use those?
Best regards, Uwe.

I have the same problem.

From the microG app itself the popup to enalbe signature spoofing is coming up but I can’t press “accept”. This is true for alle permissions. I always I have to go trough the jolla settings → Apps → Open Android Settings → Permissions to enable them.
For the signature spoofing it sadly works that way… any help?