Sailfish 4.0.1.48 and microG

Good evening everyone,
I am really sorry not to be able to write and report perfectly all the parameters suggested in the example.
I only know that in a Sony Xperia XA2 dual sim H4133, microG does not work, which is necessary for the installation of, for example, WhatsApp.
I don’t know if someone from Jolla is reading this forum, in case it wouldn’t hurt and he took note.
Now I am trying to install Sialfish X 3.3.0.16 as it is the last release microG worked with and then upgrade to Sailfish 4.0.1.48.
If in the meantime someone of good will has found a solution, thank you very much in advance.

Whatsapp works without microg

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You can download open source android applications from https://f-droid.org and from fdroid you can download Aurora store to download whatsapp from Google play store for example.

That is not the problem though as Whatsapp offers an apk officially that you can download from:

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No, not in my case: the installation goes well, I get the message with the code, then I get the warning that it takes Google Services and then everything crashes.
However, beyond WhatsApp, microG has had problems since version 3.0.4.22 of Sailfish and given the absence of specific apps made just for Sailfish, it’s up to use the Android ones and some want Google Services in all ways.
Does anyone know, please, how to fix this problem, without going all the time from version 3.3.0.16?

Yes we do, thanks to the community findings:

(But you should still try to reinstall Whatsapp completely, it indeed doesn’t require Play Services. Maybe you’ve enabled the backup on GDrive?)

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I hope this gets Jolla’s attention so it can be fixed in Android Support in the next release (since it is apparently not yet fixed and appears easy to fix)

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Thanks a lot for reporting! :smiley:
I’ll take a look at it and, as @JoOppen says, if it’s quick and easy we hope that either Jolla or the microG developers, get their hands on it

Can anybody confirm that they had a well configured and working Micro with 3.4 but it stops working after an update to 4.0?

For me, MicroG is still working on both, my XA2 and the Xperia 10 under 4.0.1.48

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Hi, I can confirm it, it happened to me too.

Same, everything was and still is working post-upgrade.

Thank you for the reports, I updated and it indeed still works as it should.
One problem I faced is that themepack support was preventing Aliendalvik from starting and I had to remove it.

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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