PA on WeTab & ExoPC

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On 25.02.2013 12:13, Uwe Geuder wrote:
> Hi!

Hi Uwe,

> I haven't been following this list before, but searching the
> archives did not produce any hits. If the topic has been handled earlier
> please excuse and give me a pointer.

> I wonder whether it makes any sense to use PA on a WeTab and/or ExoPC?
> Does anybody do that and is the platform still actively developed or is
> that HW just stuff for the museum?

Well, both, in a way ;) The hardware itself is rather old and crappy, 
but in fact that's the hardware most of the development team uses. So if 
something works for us™, it should work on your WeTab/ExoPC as well.

> I finally installed PA during the Christmas break, first on an
> ExoPC. After it became unusable after 2-3 days (don't remember which was
> the exact problem, something from the list below) I digged out a WeTab
> and installed it there. However, it did not go much better. Since then
> the devices have mainly collecting dust, because at best they could
> offer a hard-core debugging experience.

Since the WeTab and ExoPC differ in little more than branding, the 
problems will always be the same with both of them.
The first and most important question is: Which image did you use? 
Plasma Active 3? Testing? Development?

> The worst problems are:
>
> - In some phase start-up time increased drastically from the not so good
>    but probably normal 2-3 minutes to something like 15-20
>    minutes. Currently both devices are in that state. From the log
>    I spotted some D-Bus problems, not sure whether they could cause the
>    extensive delays.
>
> - In some phase auto-suspend started to activate itself after ~3 seconds.
>    Again this happened to both devices. After throwing the device into
>    the corner (not physically) for a couple of times I got over it a few
>    days later, not really sure how.
>
> - Touch is extremely unreliable at times. Probably 70% of the time it
>    works nearly perfect or at least well, but the remaining 30% is awful.
>    It accepts either no touch at all or at a completely random location.
>
>    From the net I found that touchscreen firmware can be updated:
>    http://wetabz.blogspot.fi/2011/03/upgrading-touchscreen-firmware-to-1006h.html
>    Can I find out under Mer what version I have?
>    Has anybody done the update successfully under Mer?
>
> - Connecting to WLAN with WPA has become a nightmare. Only serious
>    fiddling with a combination of network manager and my own manual
>    instance of wpa_supplicant were successful recently.
>
> - The power button does not work anymore. Well, systemctl poweroff is
>    not so difficult to type, even on the virtual keyboard...
>
>
> I have run "zypper up" at at least 2 occasions, yesterday I got about 90
> updated packages. But at least the 15-20 minute startup time remained
> unaffected (I read that others turned their devices unbootable, so
> probably mine was a good update...) Unfortunately I have not kept any
> history what got updated and when. So I guess if I don't hide the
> devices in the lowest layer of the electronic garbage pile soon, I
> should make a fresh installation. Are the repos configured in the
> October images still the ones to use are do I need different ones?
>
> All insights welcome!

I'd recommend using the latest Devel image ( 
https://share.basyskom.com/plasma-active/deployment/wetab-exopc/tablet/mer/devel/weekly/ 
) if you experience problems with the 3.0 image. The thing is: Since we 
don't have that many users using the "stable" images yet, it's rarely 
worth the effort to backport bug fixes to them. Therefore I think that 
probably Devel might currently be more stable than 3.0.
I didn't experience the problems you're describing (except for the 
auto-suspend after a few seconds) with a freshly installed PA3 stable 
image on my WeTab, though, so I don't know what's causing them on your 
device(s).

An update rendering your device unbootable is something that may happen 
from time to time with Devel, though, so to be on the safe side, you 
should always backup any critical data before doing zypper up.

> P.S. I don't expect a 100% working product, but the boot time and the
> touch mess are more than I am willing to tolerate. Of course if others
> are actively working on these issues I might contribute a bit from time
> to time, but mainly testing and taking logs. Realistically I don't have
> the time to dig really deep.

with the problems you mentioned above, I can imagine that it's no fun 
using your devices at that point.
Any contribution (even if it's only well-written bug reports) is always 
appreciated, of course.

- Thomas