Wipe out eMMC before flashing new OS?

[acrux]

I am very new to Linux…

Hmm, you did read the red note before ordering PinePhone:
Note:
Beta Limited Edition PinePhones are aimed solely at early adopters. More specifically, only intend for these units to find their way into the hands of users with extensive Linux experience.

[kqlnut]

Hello, 

I am very new to Linux…

Was wondering if anyone knew the commands for flashing an SD card from the actual pine phone itself???

Appreciate any help, because currently the phone is unusable…. It came with Manjaro….

If your phone is unusable with the current OS then you also wouldn't be able to flash an SD card from the phone itself ... Also I don't see the point in doing it from the phone itself unless you don't have a computer. I guess it would be possible, but I've never tried it. I would highly suggest using a computer for flashing an image, especially if you are inexperienced. You can find flashing instructions here. The wiki is generally a good place to start.

[susy1075]

Hello, 

I am very new to Linux…

Was wondering if anyone knew the commands for flashing an SD card from the actual pine phone itself???

Appreciate any help, because currently the phone is unusable…. It came with Manjaro….

If your phone is unusable with the current OS then you also wouldn't be able to flash an SD card from the phone itself ... Also I don't see the point in doing it from the phone itself unless you don't have a computer. I guess it would be possible, but I've never tried it. I would highly suggest using a computer for flashing an image, especially if you are inexperienced. You can find flashing instructions here. The wiki is generally a good place to start.

Thank you for your advice, I tried flashing the sd card from a library computer and balena etcher kept giving me error messages such as “flash failed”.

[Zebulon Walton]

A library computer may have restrictions in place that prevent doing things like imaging to a flash drive. Do you have a friend or relative with a computer you can use?

[kqlnut]

Thank you for your advice, I tried flashing the sd card from a library computer and balena etcher kept giving me error messages such as “flash failed”.

Theoretically you should be able to use the same CLI commands (dd or bmaptool) to flash an SD card from the PinePhone itself as from a computer. So if you really want to try and your PinePhone is currently at least somewhat usable (i. e. it boots and stays on), you could do it from a terminal on the phone. If your OS runs okay, you could just launch the terminal application and do it from there. If it doesn't, you would need an external keyboard and log into a tty with Ctrl+Alt+F3 (or another F key, look up ttys if you want to know more about that). In either case you would of course need to have the image you want to flash on your phone. You could download it from within the terminal with wget ("wget [URL]"; you might have to install that first). If you use bmaptool, you don't need to download it manually first, you can just specifiy the URL in the bmaptool command. Be careful though that you specify the right device to flash to.

I wouldn't recommend doing it this way to someone completely new to Linux (besides I'm not even sure if it really works). But if you have the patience (to read up on the stuff you don't understand yet) and the need to do it that way ... Be aware though that this whole procedure would only work once with a fresh SD card. Once you have flashed an image to it successfully, the PinePhone will boot from the SD card (since it's before the eMMC in the boot order) and while running an OS from an SD card you should really not attempt to overwrite itself.

[zetabeta]

Hi,

do I need to wipe out the eMMC before flashing a new OS to it?

In fact, I didn't do it, and after booting from the eMMC lsblk reports, in addition to the expected mmcblk2p1 and mmcblk2p2, two additional entries: mmcblk2boot0 and mmcblk2boot1. I wonder if those are left over from the previous OS...

Many thanks in advance!!

short version: no.

if fromatting means creating partitions and filesystem(s), then not needed.

however, wiping is sometimes good idea, but rather slow. like, sudo dd bs=1M if=/dev/zero of={device} , if paranoid, sudo dd bs=1M if=/dev/urandom of={device} .

if previous o.s. used gpt partition scheme instead of dos, then some partition details are also in the end of the disk (memory card). wiping end and start is good idea. because size varies commans cannot be precise.
coulde be like, sudo dd bs=1M if=/dev/zero of={device} seek=29000 , sudo dd bs=1M if=/dev/zero of={device} count=2 ."skip" and 'seek" taked their reference from "bs". these commands wipe end and start of disk.

- with my first, I immediately ruined the SIM slot because I fell into the infamous use-nano-SIM-with adapter trap ... (I found the warnings against doing that only after I'd ruined it ...)

i use nano to micro adapter, i noticed if not being careful it could damage things. adapters could vary though.