The Fairphone 4 Thread

This thread will be used to post updates on the porting of the Fairphone 4.
We are creating a SailfishOS port for the Fairphone 4 as part of a school assignment. The team changes each semester, but we’ll keep updating on this account under this thread.

At time of writing, everything works(camera, mobile data, calling etc). There are still some minor bugs, which are documented on the github. The latest release (with the boot image and the sailfish image) are also available on the Github.

Links:

14 Likes

We are trying to implement Waydroid in our port.
However, we are encountering some issues with binder nodes.

We installed the waydroid app through the chum repo, along with python-gbinder. However, when running waydroid init, we get an error that the binder nodes couldn’t be found.

[root@FP4 defaultuser]# waydroid init
[13:39:49] ERROR: Binder node "binder" for waydroid not found
[13:39:49] See also: <https://github.com/waydroid>
Run 'waydroid log' for details.
[root@FP4 defaultuser]#

/etc/binderfs does exist and we do have /etc/binder and /etc/vndbinder. We also compiled the kernel with the following flags.

CONFIG_ANDROID_BINDER_IPC=y
CONFIG_ANDROID_BINDERFS=y
CONFIG_ANDROID_BINDER_DEVICES="binder,hwbinder,vndbinder"

Doe anyone have any tips or pointers for us?

2 Likes

Can you try linking binderfs nodes as piggz did here?

Also you may need something like this configuration since waydroid would use other binder nodes than host android services.

Not sure if this is needed too with binderfs, but as last resort, add the binder nodes names you’re going to use in the kernel config too.

There is another port by mal? I hope you are aware of it. Not sure if it is released. GitHub - mlehtima/droid-config-fp4
Maybe you should join #sailfishos-porters on OFTC if not already (there’s a telegram group too)

2 Likes

Thank you for your reply! We already added the binder node names in the kernel config and we do have that waydroid configuration file. However, we might need to make some adjustments still. I’ll try symlinking the binderfs nodes. If that doesn’t work, we’ll definitely try asking in the IRC or telegram group. Thanks for the advice!

I’ve got one question, which answer would be decisive for me to decide whether I’d install the port (I know that other people think differently about this): do you implement encryption for the user data?

We don’t currently implement encryption, but if you think that’s something that would be beneficial to this port, we can discuss this with our teacher and hopefully get it on the backlog for the next group of students

2 Likes

Are you talking of a LTS Fairphone 4? So that it could be interesting for a very long time use with sfos, meaning a couple years? I would like that.

I (the project owner) am planning to do that indeed. No ETA’s or guarantees can be given though, but we will try to follow Jolla’s release schedule.

2 Likes

:+1: :+1::+1:(20 Characters…)

I have a slightly unrelated question: I notice students log in to a build server, which makes sense as most android building is a pain to do on a laptop.

The question is: do you know how the fact that sfossdk command needs root is tackled? Or do the connecting clients actually get root? is this some kvm/lxc container?

I am asking because more people (not only students) would benefit from a such setup so I’m curious how you made it work.

2 Likes

any news about a port to fairphone 5…

1 Like

This is slightly off topic too, you can’t expect people working on FP4 to have news about FP5 I guess. You can watch this space for example: What would be required for a port to Fairphone 5? - #11 by vlagged

4 Likes

Have there been any news for the Fairphone 4?