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Turn tablet into ereader

Just like the title says I want to turn an old tablet of mine into an ereader.

The tablet in question is samsung galaxy tab 3 in which I installed postMarketOS.

I installed the console version, and once everything was set up I ssd into the machine and installed the following packages :

greetd, greetd-openrc, cage, fuse

Downloaded koreader app image into /bin/

Activated the greetd service

rc-update add greetd default

and configured /etc/greetd/config.toml with the following


<span style="color:#323232;">[terminal]
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">vt = 1
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[default_session]
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">command="agreety -c sh"
</span><span style="color:#323232;">user="greeter"
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[initial_session]
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">command="cage -s -d -- koreader"
</span><span style="color:#323232;">user="me"
</span>

and rebooted the tablet, however I am still stuck with the login prompt no matter what I do.

Any tips on how fix this or a other way I could accomplish my goal?

Update

Got autologin working by ditching out greetd and using agetty, and a simple fortune command to run on startup.

After this I went for the kill and tried to install KOreader using flatpak, due to App Images not playing alright with Alpine. However I noticed something there is no arm build of KOreader for linux arm so my plans were cut short.

Will try to compile KOreader to linux arm if not successful will just put a nice UI and use the little guy as a portable hacking machine.

New update

KOreader was mess to compile so I looked for alternatives and found out foliate which fits my criteria (opds, epub and pdf support) and is in the alpine repos.

Played around with cage and got the thing somewhat working, however no virtual keyboard support for now, figuring that out now.

smeg ,

You could try asking in !linuxphones, there’s usually some good PostmarketOS knowledge over there

ransomwarelettuce OP ,

Will try to fix this later, but if not, might cross post, thx for the tip.

markstos ,

Wasn’t the tablet already an eReader?

ransomwarelettuce OP ,

Yeah let’s just say that android 4.x isn’t that great.

Could try to flash a custom ROM with a more up-to-date version of android but the 1GB of ram would not help.

Going for the minimal solution with KOreader and Alpine/PostMarketOS might be the best way to bring this buddy back to an useful state.

cow ,
@cow@lemmy.world avatar

App images don’t work on alpine. Use flat pack or run the app image in a chroot

ransomwarelettuce OP , (edited )

mmm I am now reading on the whole shbangle related to AppImages, will switch to flapak. Been trying for now to get a simple echo to work will address the rest later. Gotta get back to it tomorrow, thanks for the warning !!!

lurch ,

maybe koreader has an error and that causes the autologin session to end and you go to login.

another problem could be another login thingy started first and greetd can’t use the tty. check inittab

just_another_person ,

Did you check that your services are actually starting on boot?

ransomwarelettuce OP ,

Haven’t used openrc in a while, but greetd is present and set as default when list the services, rc-update.

just_another_person ,

Okay, but are they actually running?

Login and check that the processes actually started, and check logs to see if they had any failures.

boredsquirrel ,

Very interesting project. Cage is a wayland kiosk, right?

But what about doing system updates and stuff like shutting down? KOReader doesnt have such an interface

ransomwarelettuce OP , (edited )

Updates I can ssh into the thing since WiFi is working and turn off I use the power button might have to change some devrules because now it’s long press is mapped to reboot a single nothing, but that should be about it.

  • Yeah cage is an Wayland kiosk, and for what I tested in my main machine runs KOreader with no problem and should have a virtual keyboard.
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