Otter logo image
Valid HTML 4.01 Transitional

Asus Transformer Pad Infinity
Debian on Android

Jim Carter, 2013-08-31

If I had a working sshfs command, the way to use it is:

sshfs jimc@jacinth.jfcarter.net:/home/jimc /system/media/jimc -o allow_root -o allow_others
fusermount -u /system/media/jimc #To unmount

To avoid long delays in the editor and file manager, I should mount the specific subdirectory containing the files I want to work on, rather than the entire home directory. Or I should reorganize the home directory so it and any subdirectory have only a limited number of files that the file manager will have to stat, or which have to be shown on the editor's file selection listbox.

So where am I going to get a working sshfs command? I already decided that SSHFSDroid was too alpha level to be considered. On the web there are a lot of forum posts that tell you how to use sshfs to mount directories from your Android device onto a remote machine like a desktop PC -- the opposite of what I want to do. If your hammer isn't working, use a bigger hammer. Or if the cockroach won't die, nuke it.

There are a number of packages on the Android Market (Play Store) that will install real GNU/Linux on your Android device. They generally operate as a chroot environment. However, one of them stands out: Debian Kit by Sven-Ola Tuecke. Its special feature is that it imports the Android host environment into the chroot, so each realm can affect the other: specifically, a sshfs mount done by Debian can be used by Android.

See the instructions in the above link; but the basic idea is:

Installing Debian Kit

My experience installing Debian Kit:

Testing sshfs

The point of this performance was to get sshfs. See this post on XDA-Developers by robert1968 (2013-02-09). The success story:

Installing a Real Desktop Environment

It is now 2014-05-26 and my goals have changed a bit: I want to use my tablet as a desktop replacement machine. The killer that keeps native Android from this service is that the window manager wants only one full screen window at a time. So I need a different window manager. The sub-goals in this phase are:

Particularly desired local and global apps are:

A log of the installation procedure:

Otter logo image