Having difficulty installing PostmarketOS on Pinephone Convergence Beta edition

[spazz]

Hi all.
I made a reply about this issue to this issue in somebody else's thread started in 2021,
but it might be bumping a thread which is too old.
The original thread is this:

    https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=13703


My essential problems are:

•  When I decompress and then dd the PostmarketOS image to an SD Card, I cannot boot from that SD Card on the Pinephone.   
  
  
•  Alternately: When I try to directly follow the PostmarketOS instructions for this: It also will not boot from that SD Card.
     
•  When I try to dd an image of  "JumpDrive" (PostmarketOSbootloader / boot selection tool developed by PostmarketOS devs) to the same SD Card, this also fails to boot.
  

This is a BRAND NEW SD card out of the package.
The Pinephone does SEE the SD Card when I run lsblk on the pinephone, so it is mysterious to me why it cannot boot the images when I flash them. 

So, I am mystified and must consult the wise oracles and wizards on this forum and hope for assistance.
   
Further specific details about my attempts and links are below.   

Brand new SD card.
I have a Pinephone Convergence Beta edition.
Running lsblk on the phone, it actually sees the sd card.

However, no matter what I seem to try, I cannot boot it to either PostmarketOS as flashed to the SD card, or to Jumpdrive (developed by some of the Postmarket developers).

In the other forum thread: 
One of the repondents  [MtnSk8]   suggested zeroing the first few bytes of the SD Card.

    https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=13703

Q.
    HOW do I zero "the first few bytes" of the SD card for this operation,
    and exactly how many bytes is "the first few"?
    1?  2? 8? 16? 512? 1024?

I took a gamble on this from pinephone documentation
[url
https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/PinePh...structions
[/url]

and tried:

Code:

    sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/[DEVICE] bs=8k seek=1 count=4

But have no idea if that's what I am meant to do.
Anyway, this didn't help.

For flashing the image, I have attempted the following:

I tried flashing using standard dd method  (having first run unxz to decompress the postmarket.img.xz file)

Code:

    sudo dd if=postmarket.img of=/dev/sdXX status=progress

and also tried to flash using the interesting method of decompressing postmarket.img.xz  piped through dd as described in postmarket documentation below


    https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/JumpDrive

Code:

    xz --decompress --stdout pine64-pinephone.img.xz | sudo dd of=/dev/mmcblk... status=progress

In this case, I think the instructions are indicating doing this on the pinephone itself, but I am flashing it to the SD card using my linux desktop. 
So, in the instructions,

Code:

    /dev/mmcblk...

...in my case obviously becomes

Code:

    /dev/sdXX

I have attempted all these methods a few times, after my ignorant attempt at zeroing the first few bytes of the SD Card.
Still no luck or success at all. 
Thanks anybody for any help or advice.

[shulamy]

have you  tried etcher ?

the dd didn't work for me but etcher did

ezik

[spazz]

have you  tried etcher ?

the dd didn't work for me but etcher did

ezik

Thanks ezik. 
That's a good suggestion, but this would probably be a bit of a last resort. 
I might try the app-image version of etcher if absolutely nothing else works, 
but I hesitate as etcher is not found under standard debian repos, and has to be downloaded from a third party's website. 

dd should work, and it is mentioned in all of the documentation (postmarketOS and pinephone documentation). 
It's also the standard / default tool in gnu/linux for flashing bootable images to media.  
I'm sure there is probably just something I am missing. 

Perhaps the block size option with a specific size. 
Or something else entirely. 

Thanks again though. Good to know that might work if all else fails. 
Will keep that suggestion under my hat (:

[shulamy]

i forgot to say that it was arch manjaro and mobian so i don't know about PostmarketOS

ezik

[mikehenson]

I tried flashing using standard dd method  (having first run unxz to decompress the postmarket.img.xz file)

Code:

    sudo dd if=postmarket.img of=/dev/sdXX status=progress

Hello! I made a video about a year ago and it shows how to find the right device to flash the image to.

PinePhone Pro (1of5) - Flash DanctNIX Arch with Phosh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBGVUq3D...ixZG94pj99
00:00 Intro
00:20 Download image
01:05 uncompressed image
02:20 Turn on phone
03:30 unmount phone
04:25 dd the image
07:10 Reboot the phone
08:40 DONE!

[spazz]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBGVUq3D...ixZG94pj99
00:00 Intro
00:20 Download image
01:05 uncompressed image
02:20 Turn on phone
03:30 unmount phone
04:25 dd the image
07:10 Reboot the phone
08:40 DONE!

MH: 
You are an ABSOLUTE LEGEND, sir. 
This looks like an absolute beauty of a video. 
Chapterized, timestamped. 
Appears to be extremely thorough. 
Definitely deserves a few more views. 
I will work through this this evening or tomorrow and report back. 
Really glad to see this. 
Top work. Thank you! 

In fact, your entire channel looks like a massive asset to the community. 
I take my hat off to you.