Can't update or install software

[P3TER]

There are many methods and software Apps available to "restore" your system.

But at this point I was assuming you just want to "install" a system that works..?

but maybe you are mixing installation methods and restore methods ?

For a basic installation,  everything your phone needs to operate should be on the 'downloaded' image..
( It does NOT have saved information it needs from previous installs)
For sake of simplicity,  I suggest trying Mobian or Manjaro 'Phosh',  ... download a recent release,
    ...  use Balena Etcher to flash the image to a 16 or 32gb sd card.
put that sd card into your phone and try 'booting' from that.

When you do boot into a new system, the first time it will take a little longer to boot - as it will "Resize" your image to use the whole sd card.

Next check that you have made all the correct entries in "Settings"  including the choices in  'Regions & Languages' and your wifi information.
  (Need to put at least one good/working phone number into your 'Contacts' - using format: country code > area code > Phone number - for testing calls)
and you will need accurate information to correctly fill-in your APN information, for cellular data use.

Then do your updates, they should work directly from the software store, *(this does require an internet connection)
***  Only -  If the semi-automatic store updates do not work, * then try to install the Gnome package updater, and do updates  from there.
"Re-start your phone"  ** ( I let the timer 'time-out' instead of clicking on the option to instantly restart)
You should now be able to call and sms text

I think it would be easiest for you to do the sd card installation first, 
* AFTER  you have succeeded with the sd card,
  ***  it should be simpler for you to install to the phones eMMC later.

*** I suggest doing all the settings first, *  as a wrong or unmade choice can possibly  affect your ability to download updates.

There are a multitude of different methods that will work, * but the steps are not all inter-changeable.
 I chose Mobian and Manjaro OSes as I think your odds  for out of the box success, ... are best with those.
  ***(I would pick Arch over Manjaro personally, but sometimes Arch needs to be tweaked 'out of the box') 
For Test purposes the 16 & 32gb micro-sd cards work very well, *But you can use from 8gb to 2Tb micro-sd cards.
When I first started playing with the Pine Products (Pinebook Pro) I used an old Dell laptop with Ubuntu on it,  as that was easiest
for me to install a working copy of Balena Etcher on.
Since then,  I have had a 99+% success rate using Balena Etcher to do hundreds of micro-sd card flashes.
  Using the sd cards is great,  you can swap sd cards in about a minute to compare different OSes, or just different releases.

** There are a Lot of very smart members here on the forum, but sometimes their explanations are a bit too technical for us GUI users.
   As a GUI user I have been extremely successful in making my Pine products work.
See the thread  'Bookworm'  for some of my recent Mobian OS test results, * which recent releases work or do not work "Out of the Box".

I have Mobian/Phosh installed at the moment, and all the updates and stuff went smoothly enough, but I really want to run Arch because it seems lighter and snappier. It impressed me right out of the box. Super ironic that what seems to me like the best distro is the only one I've tried that I can't seem to update. Still, kqlnut seems to have a good handle on the command line stuff, so if he can tolerate my ignorance for long enough I think we might find a solution. I'm going to reinstall Arch and keep plugging away at the problem, partly for the challenge and partly because I like the way it runs.

---

I have a theory on what happened. So, during the initial boot it says swap failed, and it couldn't read the who-am-i register. I think this is a security thing Arch does to recognise the phone before allowing it to download software. Problem is, I bricked the original OS, so if there was any swapping of info that needed to be done when I loaded the next OS, it didn't happen. So it looks for the who-am-i register, doesn't find it, and because it's missing, it prevents downloading software. So I think what needs to happen is I have to figure out a way to repair the who-am-i register. What do you think, is that possible?

No, I'm sorry, this is not how it works. Just making up things that could somehow explain something is not any basis to solve this or any problem. A swap partition is a bit like RAM on a hard drive and has nothing to do with security or software updates. You don't 'brick' your OS with a missing internet connection or something failing in your boot process and neither does pacman stop working if you didn't wipe your SD card with zeros before flashing an image. A very specific problem like pacman not resolving mirrors is nothing that would be the cause by a faulty flashing process.

Pacman and almost every other command is verbose, you get informed about what's happening. Use this information to solve problems. Pacman informed you that it wasn't able to resolve the mirrors. So the next logical step would be to find out if other mirrors can be resolved. If so, it was a problem with the mirror, so most likely nothing on your side. If not, then pacman might have a problem on your side and you can investigate further from there.

Instead of making wild guesses and basing assumptions upon that, which will not help problem solving at all, try looking up everything you don't understand, at least superficially. It will be a lot in the beginning and might seem daunting, but you will get the hang of how things work and that will get you much farther.

Thanks for your reply. If you're willing to help me solve this I'll be happy to follow your instructions. The only thing is, I'm really new to doing command line stuff, so things that seem obvious to you go right over my head. When it comes to entering commands you really have to spell it out like I'm a complete moron or I won't get it.