handspring
Saturday, December 6 2014
Hacking Android/Cyanogen Email in KitKat and Lollipop
[17:51:38] matt [wronka.org]/Psi.cor Work switched from Zimbra to MicroSoft Exchange some time back, and I've stopped synchronizing my calendar with my Nexus 4 since then (instead using my Handspring Visor Edge). The reason was straight forward: the MicroSoft server wanted the ability to wipe my entire device.
This seemed like overreach, and after talking with people in IT, it wasn't intentional, it was just the default. The changes in the AOSP code are pretty straightforward to disable this. I've posted diffs for both KitKat and Lollipop: http://matt.wronka.org/stuff/projects/icpp/android/cyanogenmod/
The KitKat changes also include some clean-up of CM code I didn't find useful (CMUpdater, CMAccounts), these aren't in CM12 yet. If you'd rather cherry-pick the changes for CM11 or AOSP 4.4 there are two AOSP applications to patch: http://matt.wronka.org/stuff/projects/icpp/android/aosp/4.4/
It looks like a lot of refactoring went into the Exchange services in 5.0, the patchset is smaller, but there's a new issue as reported to horde: https://bugs.horde.org/ticket/13702
I can confirm that this is an issue with Android 5.0—the effect is that the device appears to sync, but when it is about to complete it removes all data it received. I have not looked into fixing this yet but appears unrelated to Horde itself.
For now, full builds are at:
http://hume.matt.wronka.org/~matt/tmp/cm-12-20141204-SNAPSHOT-CNJ-mako.zip (Nexus 4, Android 5.0/CM12/Lollipop)
http://hume.matt.wronka.org/~matt/tmp/cm-11-20141122-SNAPSHOT-CNJ-mako.zip (Nexus 4, Android 4.4/CM11/KitKat)
http://hume.matt.wronka.org/~matt/tmp/cm-11-20141114-SNAPSHOT-CNJ-crespo.zip (Nexus S, Android 4.4/CM11/KitKat)
[17:51:38] matt [wronka.org]/Psi.cor Work switched from Zimbra to MicroSoft Exchange some time back, and I've stopped synchronizing my calendar with my Nexus 4 since then (instead using my Handspring Visor Edge). The reason was straight forward: the MicroSoft server wanted the ability to wipe my entire device.
This seemed like overreach, and after talking with people in IT, it wasn't intentional, it was just the default. The changes in the AOSP code are pretty straightforward to disable this. I've posted diffs for both KitKat and Lollipop: http://matt.wronka.org/stuff/projects/icpp/android/cyanogenmod/
The KitKat changes also include some clean-up of CM code I didn't find useful (CMUpdater, CMAccounts), these aren't in CM12 yet. If you'd rather cherry-pick the changes for CM11 or AOSP 4.4 there are two AOSP applications to patch: http://matt.wronka.org/stuff/projects/icpp/android/aosp/4.4/
It looks like a lot of refactoring went into the Exchange services in 5.0, the patchset is smaller, but there's a new issue as reported to horde: https://bugs.horde.org/ticket/13702
I can confirm that this is an issue with Android 5.0—the effect is that the device appears to sync, but when it is about to complete it removes all data it received. I have not looked into fixing this yet but appears unrelated to Horde itself.
For now, full builds are at:
http://hume.matt.wronka.org/~matt/tmp/cm-12-20141204-SNAPSHOT-CNJ-mako.zip (Nexus 4, Android 5.0/CM12/Lollipop)
http://hume.matt.wronka.org/~matt/tmp/cm-11-20141122-SNAPSHOT-CNJ-mako.zip (Nexus 4, Android 4.4/CM11/KitKat)
http://hume.matt.wronka.org/~matt/tmp/cm-11-20141114-SNAPSHOT-CNJ-crespo.zip (Nexus S, Android 4.4/CM11/KitKat)
Thursday, October 20 2011
WebOS 3.0.4 Upgrade
[15:06:45] matt [wronka.org]/Psi.dementia WebOS 3.0.4 fixed a number of issues for sure, such as the fact that the web browser would crash Luna(?) on certain large pages. However, it also means a lot of patches that made the device usablish no longer worked, the bluetooth keyboard (which previously didn't have key repeat enabled by default) now drops more characters, and often gets stuck repeating in X. Tab doesn't work--it outputs '9', whereas shift-tab does produce a tab sometimes (also ctrl-shift-i). Escape is oddly ctrl-shift-[ now, which makes it seem like the ctrl key is by default broken, or something else, until it is shifted. I should probably xev that.
The tweaks to start X without the keyboard space reserved are gone--all of tweaks is currently broken. X also doesn't want to start vertically now, whether or not the keyboard is connected--this might actually have been an existing issue if there were any record of a keyboard connected. I hadn't spent much time with 3.0.2 with a keyboard stored in the bluetooth devices but not actively connected.
The default WebOS browser and mail client won't connect to my server, and die with unhelpful errors "Cannot load page" for the web browser, and "error code 990" being one of the errors for the mail client (the other being simply indicating a socket connection error). The mail client also doesn't indicate whether the problem is with the IMAP server or the SMTP server. The problem in all cases only happens with TLS or SSL; removing encryption works. I've installed the root certificate, but that hasn't seemed to fix the connection issues--my kingdom for useful error messages. Of course messaging doesn't work with Jabber, and athe existing (7 month old) messaging-plugins package doesn't seem to work with 3.0.4--I hadn't tried with 3.0.2 but it sounded as if it worked from the forums.
It's arguable if I feel like it make sense to look further into these issues. I'll admit a big part of my reluctance is no fault of HP, Palm, or the community but from the results I saw with Nokia where patches just sat stagnant on bugzilla until Maemo basically died. Unrelated to the software front, it's nice to see that HP offers 90 day service, but the actual page reminds me of why I stopped buying Palm which was because when I called them for support on a new device they basically tried as hard as possible to chargre me for the call. Later it turned out they knew there was a static electriciy discharge issue which would often cause the device to lose stored data. I should have gone with Handspring.
[15:06:45] matt [wronka.org]/Psi.dementia WebOS 3.0.4 fixed a number of issues for sure, such as the fact that the web browser would crash Luna(?) on certain large pages. However, it also means a lot of patches that made the device usablish no longer worked, the bluetooth keyboard (which previously didn't have key repeat enabled by default) now drops more characters, and often gets stuck repeating in X. Tab doesn't work--it outputs '9', whereas shift-tab does produce a tab sometimes (also ctrl-shift-i). Escape is oddly ctrl-shift-[ now, which makes it seem like the ctrl key is by default broken, or something else, until it is shifted. I should probably xev that.
The tweaks to start X without the keyboard space reserved are gone--all of tweaks is currently broken. X also doesn't want to start vertically now, whether or not the keyboard is connected--this might actually have been an existing issue if there were any record of a keyboard connected. I hadn't spent much time with 3.0.2 with a keyboard stored in the bluetooth devices but not actively connected.
The default WebOS browser and mail client won't connect to my server, and die with unhelpful errors "Cannot load page" for the web browser, and "error code 990" being one of the errors for the mail client (the other being simply indicating a socket connection error). The mail client also doesn't indicate whether the problem is with the IMAP server or the SMTP server. The problem in all cases only happens with TLS or SSL; removing encryption works. I've installed the root certificate, but that hasn't seemed to fix the connection issues--my kingdom for useful error messages. Of course messaging doesn't work with Jabber, and athe existing (7 month old) messaging-plugins package doesn't seem to work with 3.0.4--I hadn't tried with 3.0.2 but it sounded as if it worked from the forums.
It's arguable if I feel like it make sense to look further into these issues. I'll admit a big part of my reluctance is no fault of HP, Palm, or the community but from the results I saw with Nokia where patches just sat stagnant on bugzilla until Maemo basically died. Unrelated to the software front, it's nice to see that HP offers 90 day service, but the actual page reminds me of why I stopped buying Palm which was because when I called them for support on a new device they basically tried as hard as possible to chargre me for the call. Later it turned out they knew there was a static electriciy discharge issue which would often cause the device to lose stored data. I should have gone with Handspring.