First of all thanks to all of you who gave feedback regarding the PirateBox for Android. The feedback was very useful and showed that there are problems when running the app on Android 4.x.
Meanwhile I've rooted my Galaxy Nexus (still on stock ROM) running 4.3, so I had the change for in depth testing. The result is version 0.4.0 of the app which includes a different handling of the
dnsmasq process. I'll go a little into detail to describe the changes that have been made.
Those of you not interested can jump directly to the end of this post where the download link is located. I've also added the questionnaire again. It would be really nice if you could provide feedback, it's really useful.
Wrapping Dnsmasq
In previous version of the app the dnsmasq process was killed and restarted with the
--address=/#/. This worked fine on Android 2.x devices but lead to a continuous restart of the AP (Access Point) on Android 4.x devices.
The new approach is different in the way that it does not kill the dnsmasq process but installs a wrapper script that is created before the AP stars and removed afterwards.
For this to work the app saves a copy of the file
/system/bin/dnsmasq to
/system/bin/dansmasq.pb.real. On start of the PirateBox service the wrapper script is created which overwrites the
/system/bin/dnsmasq command. After the AP is started the original
dnsmasq binary is restored.
The wrapper script looks like this:
#!/system/bin/sh
exec /system/bin/dnsmasq.pb.real --address=/#/192.168.43.1 $*
The wrapper calls the original
dnsmasq binary which is now located at
/system/bin/dnsmasq.pb.real with the
--address and all other other parameters (
$*) the system used to start
dnsmasq.
If you look at the process list after starting the AP you should see that the backed up
dnsmasq.pb.real is running instead of the real one (
dnsmasq).
Here is the result of the
ps | grep dnsmasq command:
shell@maguro:/ $ ps | grep dnsmasq
nobody 5088 121 928 496 ffffffff 00000000 S /system/bin/dnsmasq.pb.backup
New Preferences
The preference screen has two new additions. One is the IP address of the AP and the other is the option to restore the original dnsmasq binary.
 |
| New Preference Options |
In previous versions the IP of the AP could determined after the AP was started and used to restart
dnsmasq. This is no longer possible, because the wrapper script has to be created before the AP starts.
On Android most of the devices have the IP address 192.168.43.1 hard coded and I don't believe that there are a lot ROMs with different addresses. Should your AP start with a different IP address, you can still change this by using the new preference setting AP IP Number.
The second new preferences option is called Restore "dnsmasq" Binary. This will, as the name implies, try to restore the original dnsmasq binary. This should not be necessary to used, because the wrapper is removed and replaced by the original binary after the AP has been started. But in case thing do not work as desired when the device is used for standard tethering, this is the option to restore the binary.
Simple Widget
The new version also comes with a simple widget. It is not pretty ... but hey, I'm a developer not an artist ;)
Meanwhile I've updated the widget images in version 0.4.1, hope the widget is looking a bit better.
Below are the links to the app, the questionnaire and to the source code located at GitHub.
So I hope the new version is working better as the previous version and I'm looking forward for your feedback.
Source Code
The source code is now available on
GitHub.
Download Links
Google Drive:
PirateBox APKs
Questionnaire
The results can be viewed
here, so you know on which configurations PirateBox is running.
