Screen flashing after upgrade

I finally got around to upgrading this (now old) machine from 16.04 -> 17.10 over the last couple days.  After fighting with DKMS it's finally booting and working... except the screen keeps flashing.

Why am I facing this reportedly fixed bug?

I managed to fix it by going into the NVidia X Server Settings and turning off this flag:

As soon as I unchecked that, everything was fine.

Unable to connect ADB to CM10

As an Android developer, I have a ton of spare devices running various versions of Android.  One of them is the original Samsung Galaxy Note running CM10 so that I can test backward compat with 4.x.

Unfortunately, I have been unable to connect to it via adb/mtp/mass_storage for quite some time.  adb via wifi works, but is dog slow when running connectedCheck.

Luckily, I figured out how to fix it yesterday (and thus the reason I am leaving this post so I can find it in a years time when I forget yet again).

It's completely incompatible with USB hubs.  While all my other devices are plugged in through a single hub so that I can test on multiple devices, this CM10 device requires that I plug it in directly.  Once I did that, it started working normally.

Why didn't I think of that earlier?  Did I mention that none of the other devices have this problem?  Just the CM10 device.

Tag Heuer - Day 1

Ordering the watch was a little tricky. Every time I went to checkout, it would remove the watch from my cart. It was just minutes after the release, so I assumed the website was having a hard time. Since there were no local shops that were going to carry it, I decided to try one more thing. I created an account first and voila the order went through with no problems. That was Monday.

Tuesday, they inform me it will be delivered by the following morning. It arrived before 10am Wednesday morning.

The packaging was really well done. Not only secure, but even the packing slip was inside a thank you note. There was no instruction manual or anything - but I mean, really, those get out of date as fast as you OTA... And I had two of those right away.

The magnetic charging base is nice, though it is awkward to use since it can't sit flat while charging.

I've had the email address for years so I rather quickly disabled wear notifications from gmail. 

The first time my phone rang, I found myself glance at my watch first. That actually surprised me. I tried answering a call with the watch, but that was pretty pointless since it was still using the speaker and microphone from the phone a few feet away.

It's rather comfortable. I like that Google Fit can be more accurate than before ( didn't always carry my phone while waking around the house, using elliptical, etc ). 

After charging through the night, today was the real test. After about 15 hours it is reporting 8% battery left. That's a far cry from 25 hours. It's a good thing I didn't leave gmail notifications enabled or I might have had to charge it after 5.  I'd say the battery is the only downside so far.

LG v10 Day 1

I've been using the LG v10 for about a day so far, an upgrade from my HTC One m7 GPe.

Overall, it's a nice device. A bit big, but I should be able to get used to that since I used to have the first gen Galaxy Note.

The UI is a little different... In the app drawer, there is a Google subfolder. You can add additional apps to it, but can't sort them. Actually doesn't look like you can remove them either. Haven't found any way to add additional folders yet.  I was able to hide all the AT&T bloatware, so that's something.

Second screen? Eh still haven't decided if it is gimmick or useful. I didn't buy it for that feature anyway.

I was going to replace the launcher with the Google Now launcher, but I like that it is a doubly linked list so I'll keep it for now.

I do like that there it's a dedicated button for screenshots - the HTC was notorious for making me try try again. I also like that I can change the soft buttons ( order and content ).

I do not like the buttons on the back. I'm sure I'll get used to them, but whoever thought it was a good idea to encourage people to accidentally put their finger on the camera lens repeatedly was obviously not a photo buff.

I haven't run any cpu or ui benchmarks yet, but it seems rather quick. Speedtest wasn't looking great. Time will tell.

And in case you are wondering why I went with this phone, it was mostly because I wanted to try out the manual camera mode. I don't expect it to beat out my Canon, but it seemed i interesting. Also, removable battery and sd are hard to come by these days.

USB3 hub disconnecting - dropping adb connection

I'm probably jumping the gun, but I am hopeful.

I was having a problem where my new OctoFire hub was disconnecting quite often -- especially if using something like Android ScreenMonitor.

I think it is fixed.  I found the suggestion to disable the autosuspend here.

Edit the /etc/default/grub file and append to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT line:

usbcore.autosuspend=-1

Then run:

sudo update-grub
sudo reboot

Reverse USB Tethering

I decided to give reverse usb tethering a shot. I don't know which devices easily support this, but I assume you have to be root. In my particular case, I was using an ICS device.  These steps could easily screw up your existing cell routing - so make sure your willing to risk it.

Step 0: Make sure the device is booted and connected via USB

Step 1: Enable tethering on the device side

• Go to Settings
• Under the Wireless & Networks, click on More
• Click on Tethering & portable hotspot
• Enable USB Tethering

Step 2: Get the IP Address of the device

malachi@onyx:~$ adb shell
root@android:/ # netcfg
lo       UP                                   127.0.0.1/8   0x00000049 00:00:00:00:00:00
dummy0   DOWN                                   0.0.0.0/0   0x00000082 62:bc:02:e1:d5:ea
rmnet0   DOWN                                   0.0.0.0/0   0x00000000 00:00:00:00:00:00
rmnet1   DOWN                                   0.0.0.0/0   0x00000000 00:00:00:00:00:00
rmnet2   DOWN                                   0.0.0.0/0   0x00000000 00:00:00:00:00:00
rmnet3   DOWN                                   0.0.0.0/0   0x00000000 00:00:00:00:00:00
rmnet4   DOWN                                   0.0.0.0/0   0x00000000 00:00:00:00:00:00
rmnet5   DOWN                                   0.0.0.0/0   0x00000000 00:00:00:00:00:00
rmnet6   DOWN                                   0.0.0.0/0   0x00000000 00:00:00:00:00:00
rmnet7   DOWN                                   0.0.0.0/0   0x00000000 00:00:00:00:00:00
sit0     DOWN                                   0.0.0.0/0   0x00000080 00:00:00:00:00:00
rndis0   UP                              192.168.42.129/24  0x00001043 da:02:11:22:14:af

Step 3: Get the matching IP Address of the workstation

malachi@onyx:~$ ifconfig -a usb0
usb0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr e2:31:b5:d7:f3:7b 
          inet addr:192.168.42.74  Bcast:192.168.42.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::e031:b5ff:fed7:f37b/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:1990 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1188 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:181334 (181.3 KB)  TX bytes:657452 (657.4 KB)

Step 4: Ping the device from the workstation

malachi@onyx:~$ ping 192.168.42.129
PING 192.168.42.129 (192.168.42.129) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.42.129: icmp_req=1 ttl=64 time=1.01 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.42.129: icmp_req=2 ttl=64 time=0.605 ms

Step 5: Ping the workstation from the device

root@android:/ # ping 192.168.42.74
PING 192.168.42.74 (192.168.42.74) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.42.74: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.427 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.42.74: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.397 ms

Step 6: Add workstation as the default gateway for the device

root@android:/ # route add default gw 192.168.42.74 dev rndis0

Step 7: Get a list of DNS servers from the workstation

malachi@onyx:~$ cat /etc/resolv.conf
nameserver 172.29.224.11
nameserver 8.8.8.8

Step 8: Add them to the device

root@android:/ # setprop net.dns1 172.29.224.11
root@android:/ # setprop net.dns2 8.8.8.8

Step 9: Setup forwarding from usb0 to eth1 on the workstation
[ most people probably use eth0. Just use ifconfig to check which one is active]

malachi@onyx:~$ sudo su - root
[sudo] password for malachi:
root@onyx:~# echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
root@onyx:~# exit

malachi@onyx:~$ sudo iptables --flush -t nat
malachi@onyx:~$ sudo iptables --table nat --append POSTROUTING --out-interface eth1 -j MASQUERADE
malachi@onyx:~$ sudo iptables --append FORWARD --in-interface usb0 -j ACCEPT

Step 10: ping google ;)

malachi@onyx:~$ adb shell
root@android:/ # ping google.com
PING google.com (74.125.127.99) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from pz-in-f99.1e100.net (74.125.127.99): icmp_seq=1 ttl=51 time=11.8 ms
64 bytes from pz-in-f99.1e100.net (74.125.127.99): icmp_seq=2 ttl=51 time=11.9 ms

And finally, check things like the Browser...

adb does not have permission to access my Atrix?

The Atrix does not have the option to allow installing from unknown (ie: non-Market) locations.  As such, I was unsure what I would see when I tried to install APKs from the command line...

malachi@onyx:~$ adb devices
* daemon not running. starting it now on port 5037 *
* daemon started successfully *
List of devices attached
????????????    no permissions

Not good... but, surely there is a way around that...?

Turns out it is quite simple really....





1. Stop the existing ADB server.

malachi@onyx:~$ adb kill-server

2. Start adb's server as root.  You could try sudo adb instead, but I didn't...

malachi@onyx:~$ sudo su - root
root@onyx:~# adb start-server
* daemon not running. starting it now on port 5037 *
* daemon started successfully *
root@onyx:~# exit
logout

3. Run adb again... this time, with root running the server, it will work.

malachi@onyx:~$ adb devices
List of devices attached
TA20704PWJ    device

NexusOne with Docking Station?

I was looking for a docking station for my Asus G73J Ubuntu laptop when I ran across the Plugable docking station.  Normally, I would not have considered a USB-based docking station, but since this laptop does not come with an ExpressCard, I have little choice.

What initially caught my attention about this universal docking station was that, unlike most of the others, it supported Linux in addition to Mac and Windows.  What sealed the deal for me though was seeing it attached to a Nexus One :)