How about a Command Line Terminal on your Pre? 43
Sure, you've downloaded the SDK and perhaps even gotten yourself Linux access (aka rooting), but that's so yesterday. The new hotness is running a command line terminal directly on your Pre.
Rick lets us know that the goodly folks at webos-internals.org have done it and have posted up instructions. Huge credit goes out to everybody who contributed to the project.
Why would you do this? Well, because it's there, obviously. But also because you can then execute commands directly on the Pre - commands that let you download and install homebrew apps and packages without having to tether to your computer.
Update: in case it wasn't clear from the above, what you're looking at here is the world's first on device homebrew app installer, as rwhitby notes.
It's early alpha stage right now, so be sure you feel confident with this linux stuff and take it slow:
This is early-alpha software. Consider yourself lucky if it works at all. Many people have put many hours of hard work in to get just this far - respect that effort when making comments and suggestions. It is a dumb terminal. You can not run full screen apps yet. There is no esc key. The SYM key is the control key. To scroll the screen, flick the screen. (Hint, it's a Pre app.)
Thanks to Rick for the heads-up and to @en0x for the screenshot!
43 Comments
Now this.. this would be a highly useful tool I believe. I can imagine a day of accessing a terminal and sshing, starting vpn connections, doing all sorts of relevant things like that.
Very cool.
Imagine no more, for I am vpning into work and sshing! It is wonderous!
This is easily the most significant Pre app so far, at least for me. Even in this primitive state, it will most likely quadruple my Pre's usefulness. (Yes, you could run a local terminal before, but you had to kill the Luna shell.... which, as far as I know, there was no way to do without connecting in from another machine. You could also use a flaky web shell which was just too unreliable to get anything done.)
Huge thanks to whomever got this done. All I need is VNC and I ought to be able to do just about anything from my Pre with a bit of eyestrain and hoop-jumping.
Assuming one can access the "USB Drive" file system (and I see no reason why you wouldn't) this opens up the possibility of removing files to create space without having to tether. That is a feature I think should have been included in the first place. (Why should I not be able to delete music/videos from within the app if I want to?)
I have wanted this since day -1. I was very disappointed when I found out it didn't come default.
Awesome. Does this mean we can uninstall the Nascar app without rooting? Gotta go try this.
Glad to know I'm not the only one who would like to delete the nascar app as well.
Now until I read Keith's comment I said "why do this?", but I agree no use for that app for me
Only if we can delete that damn NFL application too.
Are there actually instructions out there to do it? When I use the SDK to remove it (from the Linux bash shell: ./palm-install -d usb -r com.palm.app.nascar) it just laughs at me, because it is a "built in" application.
Yes, this should have been included with the Pre. Now if an ssh client works it I'm set. No more driving home when I'm on call to do a 20 second fix. YAY
Only downside is I have to root my pre, I was trying to avoid going down that rabbit hole. Not because of scared of root or anything (15+ years unix admin) but because I'm going to want to load it so full of crazy hacks I'll get sucked in and never get any real work done!
ssh works from within the terminal. I don't know if it works from the initial screen, I know the ssh executable isn't in the path when the terminal first opens. I sudo su - username to the username I created when I rooted (root work too), and I was able to ssh to another server. The program is a bit quirky at this point for general use, but it's still very cool (and will come in handy for me).
I've never done a thing in linix as far as coding
It doesn't require "coding" to use a command line shell.
I am sorry. What is function of Command Line Terminal in pre?
If you don't know, you probably don't want to use it, but basically it allows access to the underlying system of the Pre without needing a second device (such as a computer), or booting the Pre into a strange mode.
This is incredible. A phone with a Unix core. Okay, Linux. Same thing to me. That's what I always loved about OS X. The fact that I could shell out to the command line and buzz around at the inode level.
Um, a Unix based phone is nothing new. There have been several. It is new for Palm. It is also new for Sprint. It might even be new for you :)
when it says
If you are on the Pre, type:
echo "src/gz armv7 http://ipkg.preware.org/feeds/preware/armv7" >> /var/etc/ipkg/preware.conf
i type it but it goes to a google search is there a special way to type it on the pre????
You need to have some other form of shell access to the system (such as via SSH). It's just distinguishing between accessing the shell of an actual Pre vs the shell of the Pre emulator.
Awesome "Scary black screen" title because to me, its true! Command lines are just so scary there.
There is nothing scary about a command line. Now, a command line with ROOT access... that can be a bit scary :)
http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Teaching/Unix/index.html
This is sooooooooo cool!
My CS department chair once went on about how much he loved his Nokia Internet Tablet because he could pull up a true Linux command line and SSH into his machines. I just smiled and pulled out my jailbroken iPod Touch and opened MobileTerminal, and he just sorta stared at me ;) This takes that and adds another level of awesomeness, thanks to the far superior openness of the webOS platform.
This ROCKS. Nuff said.
Bow to me, for I am root! :)
This is a good step in the right direction. The terminal needs a bit of work. It logs in as root by default first off. It needs settings to change the user it spawns as.
The terminal cuts off text, and doesn't wrap well, even on wide screen. I also tried to ssh in but typing @ seems to always give me a zero. But I guess they are working on that since the wiki mentions setting VT100 will be fixed later.
ssh -l username -p port host.name.com
will work without needing the at sign.
you could also "su - username" first so any public keys you have on the pre could be used. also "su -" as root will get you roots environment (read path) and also a really long prompt ..
I installed this and indeed it appears to be very cool. However, there doesn't appear to be a way to "control-C" to cancel a command. With a nearly full battery I started 'ping sprint.com' and it began pinging. I couldn't stop it or break out of it so I closed the app, wrongly assuming it would kill the ping. About an hour later the 20% battery warning popped up and boy was the battery warm. Rebooting fixed it of course. :-)
Is there no way to kill a running command yet? Or am I missing something? I understand this is pre-alpha so I'm not expecting perfection, I'm just curious.
If you can't Ctrl-C out of a command, what about putting "&" after the command when you run it? then you can just type "killalll " and the system should kill it.
uhh, according to the instructions sym=ctrl. and sym-c works fine for sending a break.
Yeah, I just finished installing and playing around with it. Sym-C seems to work fine to me.
I was able to go into it and write a shell script in vi to launch ssh on my machine (since I got tired of typing out the IP address. I don't think I'd find it that useful to install packages that way, but accessing the command line certainly makes other things easier.
I love this app! It work very well. However, the only current downside is I CAN TYPE THE _ BUTTON!!!! I tried doing a few thing directly on it and both included using it!
Anyone know where to send bug reports? I couldn't really figure that out.
The one BIG issue I found is that after using it I got the 'too many cards open' popup even though I had no cards open at all. Had to reboot to get it back to normal.
This should be fixed in the 0.1.3 release.
The wiki page is http://www.webos-internals.org/wiki/Application:Terminal
But also because you can then execute commands directly on the Pre - commands that let you download and install homebrew apps and packages without having to tether to your computer. Thesis writing tips analysis thesis Analytic thesis Apa thesis Argumentative thesis
This is awesome. I was waiting for a terminal, then I knew things would get crazy.
Anyone else getting random reboots on phone? Any suggestions to find out what may be causing it?
Only 1 other homebrew app installed other than this terminal.
Also getting occasional random reboots with the Terminal program.
Seems to happen when I exit and open it again a few times.
Awesome program tho. Not so well publicized is that this seems to be the first app to implement a graphical plugin inside Luna. The work here will go a long way to native coded apps... Props to the Devs
pssh within classic is still a bit nicer. however, for a public alpha (or beta), this is very promising.
Is there Vim on this?
Is the package org.webosinternals.terminal no longer there? I saw org.webosinternals.termplugin but it didn't seem to work. Perhaps someone is working on something?
I can't download the package with preware. Get the error "wget: bad address 'ipkg.preware.org'". Server off? Address changed? Anyone can help? [edit] Currently works again. Probably temporary server shutdown [/edit]
Damn that font size is small. I attempted to edit the prefs to make them bigger but no luck. The other hack to start up as a user rather than root works until you go to the preference it drops you back into root upon return.
The command line terminal would be so good on the pre. It would definitely make things easier.
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FFFFFFFF YEEEAHHHHH!
everything with Pre has been 1337 mega r0x0r so far lewl 0mG :p
terminus==brilliant