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Webtop Mod for Ubuntu

fisch2481

Member
Steps on how to make your webtop worthwhile:

First off, this guide will be including links and workings from other individuals, the programs/script/procedures were not created by me; I’m just consolidating the information and providing links to their posts.

With that being said… this is what you can do to your webtop – Take a look at my screen shot below, I have a custom desktop environment and the ability to install custom programs, in that screens hot you see openoffice. This mod will turn your webtop into a more functional version of Ubuntu OS so you will have the ability to install programs and customize your settings.

View attachment 50739

Additionally, with the webtop2sd mod you will be able to repartition a portion of your SD card to allow for more memory. I believe the stock webtop allows us to use 900 megabytes of data. With this mod you will be able to use as much memory as you want (granted you have the memory available on your SD card)… CAUTION, when you partition your SD card you will lose access to the partitioned portion & possibly lose the information on your SD card. Back up your SD card before proceeding. After the webtop has been moved to the SD you can reload your files, if you wish to undo the partition look up instructions via google… Google is awesome.

One more note: I am using rooted stock .902, I have not tested this on any custom roms or any updated versions of this OS.

So let’s get going:

1: let’s install webtop2SD: http://forum.xda-developers.
com/showthread.php?t=1119555
>Read the instructions from this link – aside from switching the total memory to be partitioned I didn’t change any default settings.
>To see if it worked, go back to the webtop2sd app and hit the menu button, click diagnostics. See if the mount executable version is “webtop2sd/2.0.0” or some version of that.
>Congrats, your webtop has been moved to your sd.

2: download busybox. Make sure you install it in - /system/etc/webtop2SD. Busybox is needed. For this to work properly

3: Download and install SDK (if you don’t already have it), we need this to access ADB shell: SDK link (http://developer.android.com/
sdk/index.html).... For help configuring your ADB & SDK check this out http://androidadvices.com/how-to-install-set-up-and-use-adb-for-android-devices/
>Remember > enable usb debugging on your phone
>Install the google usb package
>Install the Android-SDK platform tool’s package
>We’ll get back to this in just a couple steps

4: You will also need the Bionic drivers installed on your computers. If you don’t have those follow this link: https://motorola-global-portal.custhelp.com/app/answers/prod_answer_detail/a_id/78648/p/30,6720,8048

5: download the mbm.tar.bz2 file from here: http://db.tt/fuEKeYDs (compliments of squinto’s dropbox at XDA)
>There is a mbm.tar file floating around too, I couldn’t get that install to work.
>Place that file on sd-ext folder

6: Check it out:
com/showthread.php?t=1281722 – this is a great resource for what’s to come. The first step tells you to run the commands through ADB shell. To do this:
>Plug in phone
>In windows, navigate to the android folder that was created when you installed SDK and go to the SDK folder.
>Go to the platform-tools folder
>Hold shift and right click somewhere in the empty portion of the folder. Click on the open command window here option
>Type “adb devices”, this will tell you if your phone is recognized with the ADB shell.
>If it shows the phones serial number then type the script that appears in my previous link. It might be helpful to copy and paste to make sure you get it right.
>The “reboot” line doesn’t reboot your phone, just manually reboot the phone.
>Don’t forget to follow instructions after reboot!

7: if you did it right, when you open up your webtop hit ctrl & alt & t. This will open up a terminal emulator. Type “sudo apt-get update” this will update the package list (programs) available for your download… then Type “gksu synaptic” to open up synaptic
>Synaptic is like the android market, you can search for packages (programs) and install them on your webtop.

8: if you want to change the desktop environment from stock to more of a windows
styled desktop search for and download and install xfce4 using synaptic. Then follow the instructions on this page from post #2 http://forum.xda-developers.
com/showthread.php?t=1281722

9: If you want to run a program on the default desktop environment hit ctrl + alt + t and type the name of the program as it appeared on synaptic. If you download the xfce4 environment applications will be linked in your start menu.

*If you have additional pointers please feel free to PM me if you want me to add them to my instructions… or not your call.

** I originally did this on my phone a few days ago, these instructions are from memory, if you get lost either post your question I will try to help find your answer or just google it… that usually works too.

*** do this at your own risk I’m not forcing anyone to do this; if you screw up your phone I’m not responsible.

**** refer to the links I posted for full details regarding the process. If you get lost try to search for the answer.

***** some programs might not work on our webtop, search for compatible programs, or just take a swing at one. Google Chrome works, but it crashes sometimes unexpectedly.





 
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getting ready to fastboot back to stock .902, couple q's:

how big did you end up partitioning for ubuntu? running stock 16gb card that came with the bionic
are you able to mount NFTS formatted usb/hard drives once in ubuntu or will they have to be formatted/not swappable between win7 and ubuntu
 
I set 5 gigs aside but still have 2.8 available installing programs. I reformatted the card to FAT and restored my SD card backup to the card (don't forget to make backup before reformatting). The contents are accessible is ubuntu and windows.
 
did everything as described and appeared to go through okay. when plugging in to the lapdock the lapdock would flash the red m logo, disappear, then come back up with the spinning m and mouse cursor for about 10 seconds; then go to a black screen and sit. never could get webtop to come up.

steps i took:
1. fastbooted back to stock .902 as well as wiped both internal/external sd cards to start from scratch.
2. installed webtop2sd with only changing the partition side to 5gb. checked diagnostic tab and showing webtop version 2.0.1.
3. tried installing busybox 1.20.1 via busybox installer app (jrummy). it failed, so i d/led busybox free and it installed 1.20.1 to /system/etc/webtop2SD okay.
4. during this time is where i think i f'ed up. i installed safestrap while SDK tools was waiting to update on the computer. like an idiot i safestrap kicked over to safe mode. when trying to boot in to safe mode the phone wouldn't ever load the boat animation, it would go directly from the safestrap boot prompt (the green version as I was in safe mode) then go to a solid black screen similar to the webtop issue described above. tried booting a couple times, same issue so i rebooted the phone, toggled back to unsafe side and everything on the phone appeared to be okay. i uninstalled the safe system (via uninstall through the app) then rebooted the phone again.
5. proceeded to run .bz2 file on /sd-ext.
6. reboot command wouldn't work (as described) so after the script completed i rebooted the phone manually.
7. rebooted the phone, plugged in to the lapdock and ran into the black screen.

i got home today and realized i didn't actually uninstall safestrap (.apk) so i just did that. i also noticed that on the diagnostics tab of webtop2sd that there was no webtop configurator version installed. thinking this may be because of safestrap being installed/toggled.

i just uninstalled safestrap .apk and reran webtop2sd. going to see if it will boot now.
 
ok, reflashed back to stock .902, rooted, then ran webtop2sd. it did quite a bit more this time, including partitioning then sync'd everything (took about 10 minutes to sync). got done with that then reboted.

now i'm having issues getting busybox to install.

which program and version of busybox did you install to /system/etc/webtop2SD? i started this time with "busybox free", when trying to install 1.20.1 it to custom location /system/etc/webtop2SD it says invalid target/location, so i used rootexplorer to create the folder webtop2SD in /system/etc/ and tried again but nothing. same thing when using "busybox installer".
 
ok i feel like i'm going backwards now. busybox will not install to /system/etc/webtop2sd, so i googled and found others had to install to /system/bin then just copied to /system/etc/webtop2sd manually.

now trying to adb, i can connect to the phone, elevate root, but then when i try to run /bin /bash i get permission denied. pressed on like the thread says and on the next line it says source /upath.sh not found
 
What installer did you use for busybox. Reading through the comments on those links I read a suggestion that said use an old version. I downloaded it using BusyBox by Stephen (stericson) found on the market.

I don't recall getting the upath.sh error. Usb debugging enabled on your phone?
 
Hello Everybody,

I'm not quite certain if I want to try this yet. I haven't figured out if I really want to go back to Ubuntu anything. I currently have a Dell Inspiron 1525 Tri-Boot System. That's right, "Tri-Boot". I currently have Windows 7, Kubuntu, and Mac OSX 10.8 ready to boot on my Laptop. The best thing is that my Dell Inspiron 1525 natively supports Mac OSX, no hacks/boot mods needed, just the original OS disc. One of the main reasons I purchased this specific dell.

So any who, I've always been accustomed to Ubuntu, used it all the time up until the 11.10 release where I found it quite buggy and slow, wifi drops all the time, bluetooth support is null, and things just didn't work right. So I switched to Kubuntu. A more souped up version of Ubuntu I guess. But it works perfectly with zero issues which is why I still use it.

So my question is, with this hack, could you mod any version of a Linux Distro to work with webtop2SD? Or does it have to be the version of Ubuntu listed above? I'm weary about going back to Ubuntu because it never worked properly. And does anyone know if it works with the new .905 update I just leaked into my phone? I really don't want to go back to stock .902, the battery life really does suck on .902. I've had to charge my phone once in the last 3 days with .905 and I was still at 40% when I plugged it in!

I wish there was a way I could just port the webtop 3.0 to my current .905 Bionic, but unfortunately it hasn't been figured out yet, and I don't think I'm willing to wait until next year for a workable Webtop. Right now I feel like my lapdock is just an overpriced web browser because that's all it does. A very outdated buggy FireFox, with no options to swtich to a different browser or anything. Kinda feel like I got ripped off when I bought it.

I'm sure we've all heard "Q3 Q3 Q3 ICS Droid Bionic" but we've also hear "October, November, December 2011 ICS Droid Bionic", which was the reason I bought it last year. So I'm not holding my breath until Q3. Anyone with any information would be a great help. Believe it or not, I actually want to use this overpriced POS the way it was meant to be used.

So let me know, k?
CAMarsh1987
 
to fisch2481:

that is the busybox installed i tried after i started from scratch again. the first time i ran through everything, busybox appeared to install to /system/etc/webtop2sd fine; after starting over i can't get it to. i think i screwed up my /bin permissions when trying to work around and copy over busybox manually to /system/etc/webtop2sd; and that is causing the permission denied on /bin /bash and source not found.

did you install the latest version of busybox from the app directly to /system/etc/webtop2sd without issues?
also, in webtop2sd, what was the order of operations that was taken to get it sync'd over correctly? i only ask b/c the first time i ran it i unmounted sd card from android, ran webtop2sd, it partitioned then it popped up that i could remount the sd card. i remounted the sd card then restarted the phone, i think not realizing that webtop2sd was still sync'ing over to the sd card. did you just hit cancel and let webtop2sd sync to the sd card (takes a while) then go ahead an reboot the phone?

to C.A.Marsh1987:

sorry i'm of little help, but would like to know this information as well. being more experienced with linux, do you remember the bash command to list permissions/owners while running root from adb? it appears my issue is a permissions issue as i cannot run /bin /bash without getting permission denied, and when running source /upath.sh i'm getting source: not found. i'm thinking i need to check my owners/permissions for my / /bin and /system folder and make sure everything looks okay.
 
Not to skip over the post above, but can this hack allow the lapdock to read usb devices that are other than FAT32? The reason i ask is because the manual says it can only read fat32 but my madre has a camera with billions of pictures but they are on ntfs cards.....
 
chuck54;[URL="tel:2134386" said:
2134386[/URL]]Not to skip over the post above, but can this hack allow the lapdock to read usb devices that are other than FAT32? The reason i ask is because the manual says it can only read fat32 but my madre has a camera with billions of pictures but they are on ntfs cards.....

I don't know, I do know that NTFS is primary used by windows, so I'm not sure if it would be compatible with a lynix OS.
 
unboostedzc;[URL="tel:2133425" said:
2133425[/URL]]to fisch2481:

that is the busybox installed i tried after i started from scratch again. the first time i ran through everything, busybox appeared to install to /system/etc/webtop2sd fine; after starting over i can't get it to. i think i screwed up my /bin permissions when trying to work around and copy over busybox manually to /system/etc/webtop2sd; and that is causing the permission denied on /bin /bash and source not found.

did you install the latest version of busybox from the app directly to /system/etc/webtop2sd without issues?
also, in webtop2sd, what was the order of operations that was taken to get it sync'd over correctly? i only ask b/c the first time i ran it i unmounted sd card from android, ran webtop2sd, it partitioned then it popped up that i could remount the sd card. i remounted the sd card then restarted the phone, i think not realizing that webtop2sd was still sync'ing over to the sd card. did you just hit cancel and let webtop2sd sync to the sd card (takes a while) then go ahead an reboot the phone?

I installed the default version of busybox that came with the previoulsy mentioned busybox download. I let the webtop2sd fully sync before remounting the sd card. This process takes a lot of patience. Lol by the time we get this set up for you we'll have webtop v3.
 
How did you get open office to install and work correctly? It broke my webtop (black screen when you plug in the phone). I tried running WebTopScripts, but that broke webtop, too. I am using synaptic. Oh yeah, did you get webtop configurator to do anything? It just blips the cursor for a second when I try to run it.


Well, scratch that. I tried it again and it worked. I do have screwy menus and such. You can't see any pf the labels or pictures. I remember seeing someone else post that they had the same problem, but I don't remember seeing a solution. Your menus look normal.

OK, well, found a solution to that problem. LOL. It has to do with anti-aliasing. Turn that off, and you can see menus. But there still aren't any pictures in the quick menu butons. You have to hover over them to see what they do.
 
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