Pinephone tutorial

andybleaden · 12 Nov 2019, 16:52

@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 · 13 Nov 2019, 21:44

@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 · 14 Nov 2019, 00:03

@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 · 14 Nov 2019, 14:14

@Flohack said in Pinephone tutorial:

in case you messed up

Outragious!...but sadly so true

domubpkm · 16 Nov 2019, 19:40

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

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 · 17 Dec 2019, 02:03

@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 · 17 Dec 2019, 02:12

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

dannyzadok · 1 Jan 2020, 07:36

@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 · 6 Feb 2020, 07:19

@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 · 6 Feb 2020, 19:12

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 · 7 Feb 2020, 17:51

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

AppLee · 7 Feb 2020, 19:21

@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 · 7 Feb 2020, 19:30

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

AppLee · 8 Feb 2020, 23:10

@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 · 9 Feb 2020, 00:53

@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 · 9 Feb 2020, 01:34

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 · 15 Feb 2020, 18:21

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.

kugiigi · 27 Feb 2020, 10:25

@Irenicus This is supposed to be ran on the PInePhone itself? on UT?

AppLee · 27 Feb 2020, 11:12

@kugiigi
If I'm not mistaken, it should be run on the PinePhone on any OS running on it.
The root path for eMMC or SDCard is not exposed on your computer when you plug the phone.

In order to do something similar you'll need to be in FEL mode and use a serial connection via the jack connector of the phone...

kugiigi · 27 Feb 2020, 16:15

@Irenicus I tried this but looks like root size isn't enough for the script. it ran out of space. I'm not sure how to resize the root on the pinephone. I think I'm not qualified for the braveheart LOL