Pinephone tutorial

marklynch

Does it matter which fs the SD card is formatted to? and is there a cap to the size permitted?

Lakotaubp

I think now this thread is getting more involved and we already have a PinePhone thread for all things PinePhone https://forums.ubports.com/topic/2403/pinephone/316 So can I very politely ask that all further conversations not on the specific Tutorial theme carry on over there. It just stops any confusion and helps others at the same time. Thank You

flohack

@kugiigi No ADB, yes...

andybleaden

@Flohack I suppose this makes it much easier to comprehend as it is in reality like a small pc. Booting (as if you had hit F12 etc) straight to bootable image like we used to do with pen drives, DVD, CDs and yes...floppies

flohack

@andybleaden Yes but to be honest, the bootload/recovery concept makes much sense for mobile devices, and is also more than just a BIOS or EFI partition on your PC. Well, kinda EFI ^^ But a recovery can also reset factory defaults, install updates etc. We should not drop this idea fully just bc Linux phones are more like PCs. The Android bootloader does a great job in allowing installation from scratch, when all data is gone etc. That I am missing in PCs a bit, the BIOS does help just with booting recovery media, but often they are not at hand. a bootloader with A/B support can help you booting the previous sane OS in case you messed up

GizmoChicken

@Flohack said in Pinephone tutorial:

a bootloader with A/B support can help you booting the previous sane OS in case you messed up

Following the suggestion made by @Lakotaubp ("I very politely ask that all further conversations not on the specific Tutorial theme carry on [in the PinePhone thread]"), I posted a suggestion related to multi-boot support in that PinePhone thread. I hope that all those interested in A/B support (which is pretty much the same thing) will also post there, so that @PINE64 will see the posts.

andybleaden

@Flohack said in Pinephone tutorial:

in case you messed up

Outragious!...but sadly so true

domubpkm

@UniSuperBox for (my) information (for the moment...)

artifacts 125 pinephone1.png
artifacts 125 pine 2.png

So one solution is to decompress the .zip folder on computer, copy the content to the SD card, insert it and boot ? Is it that ?

varuna

@Flohack said in Pinephone tutorial:

@kugiigi No ADB, yes...

I really enjoy this, remembering of my first linux ( was easier this time as i had know unix )

UniSuperBox

@domubpkm, no, unzip the file and write the image to an SD card with Etcher or a similar software.

dannyzadok

@UniSuperBox
Hello. Thanks for the instructions.
I did as said. The phone comes up, and the screen is not responding at all.
What am I doing wrong?
Danny

doniks

@dannyzadok said in Pinephone tutorial:

@UniSuperBox
Hello. Thanks for the instructions.
I did as said. The phone comes up, and the screen is not responding at all.
What am I doing wrong?
Danny

maybe just a bad build. I tried with the last successful build as of yesterday and it did boot

flohack

Please also use our community hub at https://gitlab.com/ubports/community-ports/pinephone and find there documentation, as well as an issue tracker to report problems.

canadien666

Hi, any guides available for writing UT from the SD card to the BH eMMC?
Thanks...

AppLee

@canadien666
It can be dangerous if you don't know what you're doing.
And the fact that you didn't figure out a way to do it by yourself is probably a warning that you shouldn't do it.

But hey, it's your phone.
I'm making assumptions here because I don't want to brick my phone while testing

So if I have a quick look at devices on the PinePhone you'll notice 2 MMC blocks. One is the sdcard and I suppose the other one is the eMMC.
To avoid damage, you'll have to copy data from the sdcard to the eMMC, but you have to know where you can so you won't mess up the bootloader.
With that you'll be able to call dd

But my advice is : Wait for an official script from Pine64. You can check their forum...

Blabla I'm not accountable if you did try that out

canadien666

@AppLee Yeah... Probably good advice. Thanks!!!

AppLee

@admsjas
In addition to my previous message, someone confirmed my guess ; mmcblk2 is the eMMC on the PinePhone BraveHeart.
This guy did flash an image from the sdcard to the eMMC and so you can clone your sdcard to the eMMC.

I won't give a command because if you cannot come up with it it's better not to try the operation.

dd is a powerful tool but in the wrong hands it can bring havoc on your devices. Don't mess with dd (after all it's Dexter's sister).
Ok I need my pills now

admsjas

@AppLee thanks. I'm quite familiar with the DD command as its what I've had to use to write to my SD cards because etcher isn't available for manjaro on the PBP. Theres a utility on the KDE bistros that show the separated block devices so its fairly easy to figure out which one to write to.

admsjas

For anyone interested I can confirm it works. I definitely notice quicker response and boot time, now is there a way to use screen rotation?

Irenicus

dd works, but it doesn't verify the image so it is better to use pm tool.

I made a script that helps with that - https://github.com/goddard/pinephone

It downloads the latest successful build and verifies everything downloaded correct. It then asks you what root path to flash the image to.

More improvements coming soon.