It’s not going to work. You need elevated permissions to access gnss-share’s socket, and you’re not going to get those permissions from within flatpak containers.
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Then why is it in PureOS’s optimized-for-L5 flatpak repository?
The Satellite flatpak is an application independent from Purism. I saw it and wanted to use it to have some easy way to see the status of the GPS on the Librem 5.
The Satellite application project is hosted here.
Are you sure? Can you provide a link?
FYI: I think it does work after adding the default user purism to the geoclue group.
See here my results.
Well, yes, but this gives every application running as the user access to raw GPS data regardless of whether location services are enabled or not. chmod 777 would work too 
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I don’t have a link, but if you enter ‘sat’ in the search box in the store, you will come across it.
The current state is:
To get Satellite 4.1 working you have to add the user (normally purism) to the geoclue group. This bad practice from a security point of view, but for GPS testing it might be handy.
To add the user to the geoclue group, do in a terminal:
sudo usermod -a -G geoclue purism
To remove the user again from the geoclue group, do in a terminal:
sudo deluser purism geoclue
Note that you have to reboot the phone to make changes to the groups where the user is in effective.
Make sure you have at least version 4.1 of Satellite installed.
You can start Satellite without any command line instructions via its icon, and it should work.
Unfortunately, Satellite confirms clearly for me that I do not receive any good satellite signals.
I’m reading about all the great navigation progress, so I will see if I can have the antenna connection fixed.
The weird thing is, that Satellite tells me there is ‘No Fix’ and there are no satellites visible (nor any bars in the display). Satellite says that ‘Source is none, model None’ and ‘Lock lost’.
Yet my location, both in Satellite and PureMaps is spot on. PureMaps is accurate to within a meter of my actual position; it’s spookily precise.
{Oh, and I switched off my wifi positioning.}
I would say there is something wrong with Satellite.
Hmm. Every now and then I get a fleeting glimpse of a few bars. Then they are gone again.
What I do get is 0/9 or even 0/13 active sats. Never more than 0.
ah, ok. this is very similar behavior to what I get. I thought this was because my GPS antenna has a connection issue.
I’m wondering what other people see.
I am not sure where things go wrong, but the navigation on my L5 works well enough, even if Satellite says it does not.
Satellite shows the same behaviour regardless whether the location services are switched on in Settings -> Privacy or not.
How does that work?
Ill check it tomorrow.
And wimdows, do not bother about this too much. The Geolocation is optimized for guessing your location. With many sources. From the IP you have or if your gyro compass “feel” your moving speed. And if you do not move (fast!) or the Phone did not reboot it “knows” that it likely is in the same location, even if it can not receive Position of Satellites. Or its just Triangulation between from Mobile…
I am not Sure what the “location” Settings do on the Phone, on Purism ones or on the Android one. I known that there is on modern Android ones, that they have one setting for a high resolution location and one for a less high resolution location. And that the Phones OS still collect information from WLAN, BLE and GPS… on a Ring -1 Level to gain Information for 3erd Parties even if the User on Layer 8 will not see it. Which is ok if there is no Information about your Phone, just about WLANs or Airtags Transmitted over some kind of an unknown silent mailbox (just to collect some other Information without Phone ID).
Satellite can’t “confirm clearly” anything and it isn’t going to be able to get proper data until gnss-share is updated, as the version currently in byzantium has a bug that makes it omit most of the information sent by the module.
Also, even if it would work, you’d need to put the phone outside with a good view at the sky (and preferably with screen off) for several minutes or longer until it’s able to see the satellites from a cold start, as there’s no assistance of any kind implemented yet (we have some working proof-of-concept already, but it still needs to be properly integrated).
As noted above, for Satellite to work at all you need to actively bypass the permission system, so it’s no wonder that it still works with location services disabled in the settings.
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You are right dos, i thought more about the Android-Application an Operating System. However if you have a bypass its true that this information will flow. So no i do not want to add my User to geoclue.
And a Time add to have access for some Script or Application is not available. Maybe i add it for the time i will test this. Oh i understand now why android is doing what its doing.
So what i do today.
- Install Satellite from https://flathub.org/apps/page.codeberg.tpikonen.satellite
And used the downloaded file like @rhodez-x mentioned, to install that Flatpak Version.
I did not launched it with the “–source gnss-share” parameter and yes it was another fail. I did not try to add my user to group geoclue but what should be the right way to get this done?
Did not found instructions for users shell script or how to toggle that gnome Ask for Location Access Box. However, adding sattelite to /etc/geoclue/geoclue.conf did not work too.
I lost my good Position from two weeks before. Now my Phone did not remember the “good gnss” Position or drop the Fix i received in the Past. Maybe because of Updates or by using some kill switches in between.
Without adding the user to the geoclue group, at the moment, Satellite will for sure not work. It will start, but you won’t see satellite information.
This is not necessary any more since Satellite 4.1. Satellite detects the source itself.
And, after the comments of @dos I doubt that even when Satellite can access the GPS source, there will be any useful information. An updated version in the PureOS repositories of gnss-share is needed first.
Thank you for your update janvug,
i would use the group Patch but it feels like a hack or Workaround so i just wait for more development.
The Reset of my Almanac or enhances GNOSS Plane was a Show-Stopper for me. However i like to Route myself with Maps, or with Offline-Applications through some route to some destination. So i would not use Gnome Maps, as i would not use Google Routing. And if its just to remember the Route or the Streets i have to pass.
My Curiosity was just to collect routes or distances or to discover some difference in altitude i have on my weekly way. So its not important.
And with satellite you can trace your own way. Or by just have a script writing the raw Data and transmute it later with some cl tools. So i am fine.
Thank you for your attention.
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