I also broke my mobian with update to 5.9 and after that found this thread - too late. But today I managed to update it more or less cleanly (using only instructions from apt update) and without reflashing. The only issue now I have 2 kernels - 5.8 and 5.9 (active), so 5.8 will need to manually uninstall.
Oops, right. Don't know what I was thinking!
What to do when I get this?:
[quote pid='82556' dateline='1604622255']
sh: 1: /usr/sbin/u-boot-install-pinephone: not found
[/quote]
u-boot-install-pinephone is superseeded by u-boot-install-sunxi64
So no worries. I did a fresh install. followed with a u-boot-install-pinephone. After the self-inflicted complication that came from not having a fully charged pinephone (when will I ever learn?!), and remembering to use Disk utility from a newer computer so that I could "grow the rootfs", (Jumpdrive 5.0 did not automatically increase the rootfs, I think maybe because the older computer's Disk utility?) I was able to boot successfully into the new 5.9 kernel. By this weekend's update I was happily noticing that the battery life seemed stabilized quite a bit more. This morning, I confirmed that finally I was able to connect my pinephone to the laptop via USB, at which time the internet became available to the laptop. Hurray! (I could have used wifi, but really preferred wired tethering)
So many good things in week one of the 5.9 kernel. Thank you!
But if I install a Mobian nightly today, keeping it updated with APT is the same as re-flashing it with a new version? Is it possible to migrate from Nightly to "stable" afterwards without a complete re-flash?