PinePhone Pro not detected by my PC

[Syndicator]

Before I respond I have a very simple question to ask, to boot my phone from SPI flash do I need to have the sim card in the phone?

[98cwitr]

Before I respond I have a very simple question to ask, to boot my phone from SPI flash do I need to have the sim card in the phone?

No, SPI flash is baked onto the board. In order to flash the SPI though, bootloaders like Tow-boot will want to be flashed to the SPI from an sd card.

[Syndicator]

Before I respond I have a very simple question to ask, to boot my phone from SPI flash do I need to have the sim card in the phone?

No, SPI flash is baked onto the board. In order to flash the SPI though, bootloaders like Tow-boot will want to be flashed to the SPI from an sd card.

I did not think so.

Whats more, I loaded Tow Boot onto the SD Card again and put it back in and that does work. I even reinstalled it. I still cannot boot from SD and I cannot boot from the eMMC. I will post one picture, the phone is dead right now. The message that comes up is different when I attempt to boot from SD or the eMMC.

https://imgur.com/a/KDgq5I0

[fxc]

Before I respond I have a very simple question to ask, to boot my phone from SPI flash do I need to have the sim card in the phone?

No, SPI flash is baked onto the board. In order to flash the SPI though, bootloaders like Tow-boot will want to be flashed to the SPI from an sd card.

I did not think so.

Whats more, I loaded Tow Boot onto the SD Card again and put it back in and that does work. I even reinstalled it. I still cannot boot from SD and I cannot boot from the eMMC. I will post one picture, the phone is dead right now. The message that comes up is different when I attempt to boot from SD or the eMMC.

https://imgur.com/a/KDgq5I0

I would suggest you to insert a flashed microSD card in the top slot of the phone, all the way inserted. Then hold the RE button at the backside of the phone, while connecting the phone via USB to your computer and to keep continuing holding RE for a good more 30 seconds. Connecting the phone via USB will boot the phone and the RE button will disconnect the SPI and the eMMC at boot, so it should boot from the microSD card just fine.

If nothing comes up on the phone you can type the command "lsusb" on your PC to check if a new device comes up (which would be Maskrom mode and which would indicate that the microSD card is not flashed or inserted correctly).

Please also write the command and the exact image you used in a reply here so we can double-check that. From the image you've posted it seems to boot fine but into a corrupted installation (and it sounds like it always only boots into the corrupted installation on the eMMC), so I wouldn't worry too much. If you join the bridged community chat it should be an issue which should be quite easy to solve there: https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Main_Page#Chat_Platforms

[Syndicator]

Please don't understand it as condescending remarks, it is really not meant like that. It is just important to understand there there is likely a misunderstanding about how the boot process works here and we will turn in circles unless we find the exact misunderstanding. For example you write that you press "volume up" to try to boot from the microSD card, however in Tow-Boot volume up is the USB mass storage mode and volume down is selecting microSD card so I have trouble understanding the exact steps you take and symptoms you're experiencing. I would recommend to recheck all steps and the relevant Tow-Boot and wiki documentation.

You could also join the bridged community channel (see https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Main_Page#Chat_Platforms), as it is probably easier to quickly solve the exact cause there.

Thanks that did get the phone to boot from SD, however it's impossible to connect to the internet (wifi) long enough to download the OS and try to reinstall. It crashes every 2-3 minutes if I'm lucky.
I think I tried putting a USB in the phone and downloading it (the OS) to the phone and or installing it from there (USB) before but I cannot remember. I will probably try it (again) and let you know if it worked.

Noted. I'm not usually that sensitive, pardon me.
The discord/telegram channels are a bit fast I'm less likely to make errors when I can re-read what you say and I dont have to sort through X messages to find it again. Especially when I'm at work.

[fxc]

Please don't understand it as condescending remarks, it is really not meant like that. It is just important to understand there there is likely a misunderstanding about how the boot process works here and we will turn in circles unless we find the exact misunderstanding. For example you write that you press "volume up" to try to boot from the microSD card, however in Tow-Boot volume up is the USB mass storage mode and volume down is selecting microSD card so I have trouble understanding the exact steps you take and symptoms you're experiencing. I would recommend to recheck all steps and the relevant Tow-Boot and wiki documentation.

You could also join the bridged community channel (see https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Main_Page#Chat_Platforms), as it is probably easier to quickly solve the exact cause there.

Thanks that did get the phone to boot from SD, however it's impossible to connect to the internet (wifi) long enough to download the OS and try to reinstall. It crashes every 2-3 minutes if I'm lucky.
I think I tried putting a USB in the phone and downloading it (the OS) to the phone and or installing it from there (USB) before but I cannot remember. I will probably try it (again) and let you know if it worked.

Noted. I'm not usually that sensitive, pardon me.
The discord/telegram channels are a bit fast I'm less likely to make errors when I can re-read what you say and I dont have to sort through X messages to find it again. Especially when I'm at work.

If you're on Linux on the desktop PC you can mount the microSD card on the PC again and put an image on there. Alternatively something like USB network would work too. I would also recommend to try to reinstall Tow-Boot to the SPI using the installer image, as there seems to be an issue with the current Tow-Boot installation (maybe it wasn't flashed to the SPI earlier?).

[Syndicator]

I did finally get it connected long enough to download the file in full and I tried to dd it
that xzcat /home/manjaro/Downloads/Manjaro-phosh-phinephonepro-beta23.img of=/dev
I cant remember the rest of the coding right now

I tried it and I am getting an error i will post later as I am just getting done with my lunch break

But to respond to your last comment fxc the phone shows up when I type in lsusb as that 27:33 maskrom but like the title of the thread says I cannot do anything the phone isnt accessible to me from the pc in any way shape or form. it charges on it and shows up so I wouldnt have been able to transfer the OS via USB is my whole point.

Either way it's on there now thankfully. Hopefully someone can tell me if I dd it onto the eMMC from the SD card it's saved on or how do I proceed? Bc just dd'ing it didn't work.

edit: here is what happened when I dd'd it's saying it doesnt recognize the file format it's the same OS I tried to flash to the eMMC originally as well.
Also I flashed the SD using etcher.
https://imgur.com/v3ujF3V

[wibble]

xzcat is complaining that the file isn't xz compressed - did you extract it already? The .img extension suggests it's a raw image rather than the .img.xz from the download page:
https://github.com/manjaro-pinephone/phosh/releases
If that's the case you don't need to use zcat, just dd. The subsequent commands show the sort of small typos that cause problems, which is why we want to know EXACTLY what was done. People often think they've followed the instructions but are caught out by a typo, a misunderstanding, or inadvertently missing a step for example. Or it turns out there's something that whoever wrote the instructions thought was so obvious that they didn't think to include it. Or some browser version 'helpfully' automatically extracts compressed file contents, and so on.

[Syndicator]

xzcat is complaining that the file isn't xz compressed - did you extract it already? The .img extension suggests it's a raw image rather than the .img.xz from the download page:
https://github.com/manjaro-pinephone/phosh/releases
If that's the case you don't need to use zcat, just dd. The subsequent commands show the sort of small typos that cause problems, which is why we want to know EXACTLY what was done. People often think they've followed the instructions but are caught out by a typo, a misunderstanding, or inadvertently missing a step for example. Or it turns out there's something that whoever wrote the instructions thought was so obvious that they didn't think to include it. Or some browser version 'helpfully' automatically extracts compressed file contents, and so on.

I am going to give that a shot right now. That makes so much sense I'm pretty sure it'll be working in no time thank you for breaking that down for me.

EDIT
SO the issue I am having is its installing and it doesnt update me on the process of the update automatically i press enter it shows it's gone up by 1kb i wait a minute it says nothing i press enter it goes up by 1 more kb should i just stop the install and try again? i just cut the

xzcat /home/manjaro/Downloads/ img |
out of the code and started with

sudo dd and the rest of that line of code i triple checked it for spelling errors

https://imgur.com/hxpOmEo

[98cwitr]

Before I respond I have a very simple question to ask, to boot my phone from SPI flash do I need to have the sim card in the phone?

No, SPI flash is baked onto the board. In order to flash the SPI though, bootloaders like Tow-boot will want to be flashed to the SPI from an sd card.

I did not think so.

Whats more, I loaded Tow Boot onto the SD Card again and put it back in and that does work. I even reinstalled it. I still cannot boot from SD and I cannot boot from the eMMC. I will post one picture, the phone is dead right now. The message that comes up is different when I attempt to boot from SD or the eMMC.

https://imgur.com/a/KDgq5I0

You need to hold volume down button immediately after powering on and seeing the red light + first vibrate. That'll boot to the sd card.

I'd also like to see the output of

Code:

lsblk

and your dd command being issued.