Sailfish apps requiring internet won't start from launcher

I’ve got a weird problem here.
Sailfish apps requiring internet won’t start from launcher or the tile.
Example apps that won’t launch:

  • Browser
  • Calendar
  • Weather
  • Piperka

Example apps that will launch:

  • Phone
  • Messages
  • Settings
  • Terminal
  • All android apps

When I start the terminal, and I enter sailfish-browser, the browser will start.

I really don´t understand how it is possible, but it probably is related:
I edited the hosts file right before this started.

I have a host file that will block some websites. I used StevenBlack’s hostsfiles with categories “Unified hosts + social.” I’ve had it for some time, but I didn´t want it to block reddit anymore.
So I entered grep -v reddit /etc/hosts >> ./hosts and after a quick check of ./hosts I did devel-su and mv ./hosts /etc/hosts
I restarted and couldn´t use my apps anymore. Also, reddit is still blocked, while no longer in the /etc/hosts file.

It also sounds similar to this: App Won't Start From Launcher
Which is a sandboxing problem.

Instead of guessing, have you tried restoring your old /etc/hosts?

FWIW, I don’t think it has anything to do with it but you should rule it out. Also other hacks you employed yourself. And give us some diagnostic data/output, something to work with.

Thank you for your reply.
I did back up the original hosts file, but deleted it when my new host file didn´t give any problems. Until I deleted some lines. So no, I did not and could not restore backup.
I have recently reflashed my phone, after 4.5.0.16 update failed for me.
I have some software from openrepos, and I did once use GitHub - giampaolo/pyftpdlib: Extremely fast and scalable Python FTP server library to wireless transfer files to my phone about 2 months ago. I checked my history for my user and the devel-su root user to be sure I’m not missing anything.

sailfish-browser outputs something:

[D] unknown:0 - Using Wayland-EGL
library “libGLESv2_adreno.so” not found
library “eglSubDriverAndroid.so” not found
greHome from GRE_HOME:/usr/bin
libuxl.so in not found, in /usr/bin/libxul.so
Created LOG for EmbedLiteTrace
[W] unknown:0 - Unable to open bookmarks “/home/defaultuser/.local/share/org.sailfishos/browser/bookmarks.json”
[D] onCompleted:105 - ViewPlaceholder requires a SilicaFlickable parent
Created LOG for EmbedLite
Created LOG for EmbedPrefs
Created LOG for EmbedLiteLayerManager

And it will output more when I interact with the browser. I did type this in by hand, as I am not aware of a way to easily transfer terminal output to my computer. sailfish-browser >> ./log didn’t work.

I couldn’t find anything useful in /var/log. But I also don’t know where to start looking.

I now rebooted the phone. Unlocked. Opened terminal, devel-su, because regular user doesn´t have permission to journalctl. journalctl -f >> ./tmplogfile. Try to open the browser by clicking the icon from launcher. Back to terminal. Ctrl-C to break logging.
This is the contents of the file:

– Logs begin at Thu 2023-03-23 20:27:57 CET. –
mrt 23 20:30:25 Xperia10II-DualSIM rmt_storage:INFO:rmt_storage_rw_iovec_cb: Write iovec request received for /boot/modem_fs2
mrt 23 20:30:25 Xperia10II-DualSIM rmt_storage:INFO:rmt_storage_client_thread: Calling Write [offset=0, size=2097152]for /boot/modem_fs2!
mrt 23 20:30:25 Xperia10II-DualSIM rmt_storage:INFO:rmt_storage_client_thread: Done Write (bytes = 2097152) for /boot/modem_fs2!
mrt 23 20:30:27 Xperia10II-DualSIM kernel: i2c_geni 4a88000.i2c: i2c error :-107
mrt 23 20:30:37 Xperia10II-DualSIM kernel: i2c_geni 4a88000.i2c: i2c error :-107
mrt 23 20:30:48 Xperia10II-DualSIM kernel: i2c_geni 4a88000.i2c: i2c error :-107
mrt 23 20:30:58 Xperia10II-DualSIM kernel: i2c_geni 4a88000.i2c: i2c error :-107
mrt 23 20:31:08 Xperia10II-DualSIM kernel: i2c_geni 4a88000.i2c: i2c error :-107
mrt 23 20:31:18 Xperia10II-DualSIM kernel: i2c_geni 4a88000.i2c: i2c error :-107
mrt 23 20:31:29 Xperia10II-DualSIM kernel: i2c_geni 4a88000.i2c: i2c error :-107
mrt 23 20:31:45 Xperia10II-DualSIM dbus-daemon[5028]: dbus-daemon[5028]: [session uid=100000 pid=5028] Activating service name=‘org.sailfishos.browser.ui’ requested by ‘:1.84’ (uid=100000 pid=8063 comm="/usr/libexec/mliteremoteaction org.sailfishos.brow" label=“u:r:kernel:s0”)
mrt 23 20:31:45 Xperia10II-DualSIM invoker[8067]: warning: Launch failed, application specific booster is not available.
mrt 23 20:31:45 Xperia10II-DualSIM dbus-daemon[5028]: dbus-daemon[5028]: [session uid=100000 pid=5028] Activated service ‘org.sailfishos.browser.ui’ failed: Process org.sailfishos.browser.ui exited with status 1
mrt 23 20:31:45 Xperia10II-DualSIM lipstick[5165]: Remote action failed: Process org.sailfishos.browser.ui exited with status 1
mrt 23 20:31:49 Xperia10II-DualSIM kernel: i2c_geni 4a88000.i2c: i2c error :-107
mrt 23 20:31:55 Xperia10II-DualSIM wpa_supplicant[4940]: wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-REGDOM-CHANGE init=DRIVER type=COUNTRY alpha2=US
mrt 23 20:31:59 Xperia10II-DualSIM kernel: i2c_geni 4a88000.i2c: i2c error :-107
mrt 23 20:32:06 Xperia10II-DualSIM fingerterm[6277]: [D] unknown:0 - unknown special key: 67108864

There seems to be relevant information in here.

Also, I just remembered something that might be relevant.
I have 7GB data, went through it really fast this month. I usually don´t even use half, because I’m connected to wifi everywhere, except for 30 minutes travelling twice a day. My apps might started stopping at about the same time. If it is not too expensive, I will buy another few MB to check if my apps will start working again and report back.

I think I did not see your first self-reply when I first replied.
If you think you are affected by this problem, have you checked your apps against this list?

So you currently have no /etc/hosts at all?
What I meant is: restore it to the installation default.
I think it should contain at least these two lines at the top:

127.0.0.1		localhost.localdomain localhost
::1		ip6-localhost localhost6.localdomain6 localhost6

OTOH, I just tested removing it and it has no effect on the browser.

I wonder how you installed, used and possibly removed that python library.

Re your journal output:
Yes, these lines seem relevant:

mrt 23 20:31:45 Xperia10II-DualSIM dbus-daemon[5028]: dbus-daemon[5028]: [session uid=100000 pid=5028] Activating service name=‘org.sailfishos.browser.ui’ requested by ‘:1.84’ (uid=100000 pid=8063 comm="/usr/libexec/mliteremoteaction org.sailfishos.brow" label=“u:r:kernel:s0”)
mrt 23 20:31:45 Xperia10II-DualSIM invoker[8067]: warning: Launch failed, application specific booster is not available.
mrt 23 20:31:45 Xperia10II-DualSIM dbus-daemon[5028]: dbus-daemon[5028]: [session uid=100000 pid=5028] Activated service ‘org.sailfishos.browser.ui’ failed: Process org.sailfishos.browser.ui exited with status 1
mrt 23 20:31:45 Xperia10II-DualSIM lipstick[5165]: Remote action failed: Process org.sailfishos.browser.ui exited with status 1

This is from a launcher start, yes?
Please compare to a cmdline start, and do the same with some other problematic apps as well.

PS

On my phone, it looks like this:

[D] unknown:0 - Using Wayland-EGL
[D] onCompleted:105 - ViewPlaceholder requires a SilicaFlickable parent
greHome from GRE_HOME:/usr/bin
libxul.so is not found, in /usr/bin/libxul.so
Created LOG for EmbedLiteTrace
Created LOG for EmbedLite
Created LOG for EmbedPrefs
Created LOG for EmbedLiteLayerManager

Note the additional missing libraries in yours.

On my phone:

$> find / -name eglSubDriverAndroid.so 2>/dev/null
/odm/lib64/egl/eglSubDriverAndroid.so
/odm/lib/egl/eglSubDriverAndroid.so
$> find / -name libGLESv2_adreno.so 2>/dev/null
/odm/lib64/egl/libGLESv2_adreno.so
/odm/lib/egl/libGLESv2_adreno.so

So, something’s off on your system?

I have a hosts file, apart from a lot of domains routed to 0.0.0.0, there are a lot of local ip routes, like the localhost 127.0.0.1, and a lot of ipv6 stuff. With my limited knowledge I can’t be confident but it looks very normal.

For the python script: well, I think I am stupid, or more sick than I thought I was. I checked the history and confidently stated no other modifications. Well, I missed 2:
pkcon install python3-pip
pip3 install pyftpdlib
and then I did
curl link to script | python3
This was on a freshly imaged phone, that worked fine afterwards for 2 months. I did glance at the script and check for red flags before running the code, but I didn’t check thouroughly.

as for the missing libraries, I don’t know how to interpret that.

logging the browser launch from terminal, I will do that asap and reply here.

Or would it be easier to just reflash again?

Since you mentioned it, I suggested you might want to restore or recreate the original hosts file, or even remove this one, just to rule it out.

A lot could’ve gone wrong there, esp. the last one. But only you know what “link to script” contains, and what it did.

What about the libraries I mentioned in my last post? Are they gone from your system?

Also check your package manager’s history, maybe you inadvertently removed something important: /var/log/zypp/history
Big file, but all transactions have human-readable timestamps.

And do more comparisons with the journal, as I already suggested.

Output of journalctl -f when browser launched from terminal:

-- Logs begin at Thu 2023-03-23 20:27:57 CET. --
mrt 23 20:30:25 Xperia10II-DualSIM rmt_storage:INFO:rmt_storage_rw_iovec_cb: Write iovec request received for /boot/modem_fs2
mrt 23 20:30:25 Xperia10II-DualSIM rmt_storage:INFO:rmt_storage_client_thread: Calling Write [offset=0, size=2097152]for /boot/modem_fs2!
mrt 23 20:30:25 Xperia10II-DualSIM rmt_storage:INFO:rmt_storage_client_thread: Done Write (bytes = 2097152) for /boot/modem_fs2!
mrt 23 20:30:27 Xperia10II-DualSIM kernel: i2c_geni 4a88000.i2c: i2c error :-107
mrt 23 20:30:37 Xperia10II-DualSIM kernel: i2c_geni 4a88000.i2c: i2c error :-107
mrt 23 20:30:48 Xperia10II-DualSIM kernel: i2c_geni 4a88000.i2c: i2c error :-107
mrt 23 20:30:58 Xperia10II-DualSIM kernel: i2c_geni 4a88000.i2c: i2c error :-107
mrt 23 20:31:08 Xperia10II-DualSIM kernel: i2c_geni 4a88000.i2c: i2c error :-107
mrt 23 20:31:18 Xperia10II-DualSIM kernel: i2c_geni 4a88000.i2c: i2c error :-107
mrt 23 20:31:29 Xperia10II-DualSIM kernel: i2c_geni 4a88000.i2c: i2c error :-107
mrt 23 20:31:45 Xperia10II-DualSIM dbus-daemon[5028]: dbus-daemon[5028]: [session uid=100000 pid=5028] Activating service name='org.sailfishos.browser.ui' requested by ':1.84' (uid=100000 pid=8063 comm="/usr/libexec/mliteremoteaction org.sailfishos.brow" label="u:r:kernel:s0")
mrt 23 20:31:45 Xperia10II-DualSIM invoker[8067]: warning: Launch failed, application specific booster is not available.
mrt 23 20:31:45 Xperia10II-DualSIM dbus-daemon[5028]: dbus-daemon[5028]: [session uid=100000 pid=5028] Activated service 'org.sailfishos.browser.ui' failed: Process org.sailfishos.browser.ui exited with status 1
mrt 23 20:31:45 Xperia10II-DualSIM lipstick[5165]: Remote action failed: Process org.sailfishos.browser.ui exited with status 1
mrt 23 20:31:49 Xperia10II-DualSIM kernel: i2c_geni 4a88000.i2c: i2c error :-107
mrt 23 20:31:55 Xperia10II-DualSIM wpa_supplicant[4940]: wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-REGDOM-CHANGE init=DRIVER type=COUNTRY alpha2=US
mrt 23 20:31:59 Xperia10II-DualSIM kernel: i2c_geni 4a88000.i2c: i2c error :-107
mrt 23 20:32:06 Xperia10II-DualSIM fingerterm[6277]: [D] unknown:0 - unknown special key:  67108864
-- Logs begin at Sat 2023-03-25 07:08:17 CET. --
mrt 25 07:26:07 Xperia10II-DualSIM kernel: i2c_geni 4a88000.i2c: i2c error :-107
mrt 25 07:26:21 Xperia10II-DualSIM invoker[5744]: WARNING: An inactive plugin is misbehaving - tried to show a window!
mrt 25 07:26:21 Xperia10II-DualSIM invoker[5744]: WARNING: requestActivate() called for  QQuickView(0x2eb7ba50)  which has Qt::WindowDoesNotAcceptFocus set.
mrt 25 07:26:27 Xperia10II-DualSIM kernel: i2c_geni 4a88000.i2c: i2c error :-107
mrt 25 07:26:29 Xperia10II-DualSIM fingerterm[26414]: [D] unknown:0 - unknown special key:  67108864
mrt 25 07:26:30 Xperia10II-DualSIM lipstick[5165]: [D] onDestruction:268 - coverActionIndicators destroyed sailfish-browser.desktop
mrt 25 07:26:30 Xperia10II-DualSIM mce[1663]: modules/battery-udev.c: mcebat_update(): battery_level : 70 -> 69
mrt 25 07:26:32 Xperia10II-DualSIM kernel: BUG: Bad rss-counter state mm:ffffffc0c13fe200 idx:4 val:28730
mrt 25 07:26:48 Xperia10II-DualSIM kernel: i2c_geni 4a88000.i2c: i2c error :-107
mrt 25 07:26:58 Xperia10II-DualSIM kernel: i2c_geni 4a88000.i2c: i2c error :-107
mrt 25 07:27:08 Xperia10II-DualSIM systemd[5011]: selinux: Unknown permission status for class system
mrt 25 07:27:08 Xperia10II-DualSIM fingerterm[6692]: [D] unknown:0 - Using Wayland-EGL
mrt 25 07:27:08 Xperia10II-DualSIM lipstick[5165]: library "libGLESv2_adreno.so" not found
mrt 25 07:27:08 Xperia10II-DualSIM lipstick[5165]: library "eglSubDriverAndroid.so" not found
mrt 25 07:27:08 Xperia10II-DualSIM kernel: i2c_geni 4a88000.i2c: i2c error :-107
mrt 25 07:27:19 Xperia10II-DualSIM kernel: i2c_geni 4a88000.i2c: i2c error :-107
mrt 25 07:27:28 Xperia10II-DualSIM lipstick[5165]: [D] onCompleted:264 - coverActionIndicators created sailfish-browser.desktop
mrt 25 07:27:29 Xperia10II-DualSIM kernel: i2c_geni 4a88000.i2c: i2c error :-107
mrt 25 07:27:39 Xperia10II-DualSIM kernel: i2c_geni 4a88000.i2c: i2c error :-107
mrt 25 07:27:47 Xperia10II-DualSIM invoker[5744]: WARNING: An inactive plugin is misbehaving - tried to show a window!
mrt 25 07:27:47 Xperia10II-DualSIM invoker[5744]: WARNING: requestActivate() called for  QQuickView(0x2eb7ba50)  which has Qt::WindowDoesNotAcceptFocus set.
mrt 25 07:27:49 Xperia10II-DualSIM kernel: i2c_geni 4a88000.i2c: i2c error :-107
mrt 25 07:27:50 Xperia10II-DualSIM fingerterm[26414]: [D] unknown:0 - unknown special key:  67108864

Nothing weird stood out to me in /var/log/zypp/history.

I found more:

Internet has nothing to do with an app launching or not. I could launch the store.

Some of the apps I can´t open list as not installed. I chose e-mail as a test.
I pressed install. I got an error: “Can’t install update” or something like that. Now the app does list as installed. I still cannot open it.
I removed e-mail from my phone, and then reinstalled. It still won’t open.

I installed sfos-upgrade, and did sfos-upgrade --verify. It installed 8 packages. After a reboot, it didn´t solve anything.

I will now reflash the phone. I want it functioning. Especially e-mail, and I don´t know how to open it from the terminal, but I want other apps to function as well.

@ohnonot Thank you for helping me

1 Like

Yes, I was going to recommend a reinstall now.

Remember that your extracurricular activities borked your OS, most likely those relating to python.

On normal Linux distro’s python is an integral part of the system and messing with it is highly discouraged; I suspect it will be similar on SFOS.

Messing with /etc/hosts is usually harmless, but you should keep the original file.
Incidenatlly, I have an article about that in my blog :wink: