Tow-Boot, a new U-Boot option for Pinephone Pro and other devices

[Simon Belmont]

I expect that I am missing the obvious, somewhere. I will explain my train of logic, and I would be grateful if you would help me find the path.

The getting-started.md file says to dd spi-installer.img to an sd card, and to boot from it. I watched the videos, and all that looks pretty easy. However, there is no file spi-installer.img in the git download, so I assume that I need to build it. I find no makefiles or instruction on how to do this, just .nix files.

"pine64-pinephonePro-2021.10-004.tar.xz" is what you're looking for. "spi-installer.img" is contained within.

It can be found here: https://github.com/Tow-Boot/Tow-Boot/rel...021.10-004

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My PPP (Explore Edition) cannot boot spi-installer which installed into SD card.
Should I wipe bootloader on eMMC ?

You can delete the stock data from eMMC, if you don't want it. With eMMC empty, the phone will default to booting from the SD Card (until you put an OS back on the eMMC, of course). But this is really a separate topic from successfully installing Tow-Boot to the phone's SPI (which can be done on a stock PPP, without touching the eMMC). Perhaps it is also worth mentioning that with Tow-Boot installed to the SPI, booting from the SD Card no longer requires the RE to be pressed. It is as simple as holding down Vol Down and short-pressing the Power Button.

I used "pine64-pinephonePro-2021.10-004.tar.xz", and not "pine64-pinephonePro-2021.10-004-pre.tar.xz" because, while "pine64-pinephonePro-2021.10-004-pre.tar.xz" would boot to the GUI, upon attempting to install it, it would return the error:

Code:

Error: /dev/mtdblock0 not found

spi-nor spi0.0:
unrecognized JEDEC id bytes ff ff ff ff ff ff
spi-nor: probe of spi0.0 failed with -2

Whereas "pine64-pinephonePro-2021.10-004.tar.xz" worked perfectly (after the 4th-ish attempt (and after adding a volume label to the SD Card)).

This is what worked for me when I finally got Tow-Boot to successfully install to the SPI; fixing the suspend issue amongst other things:

Charge the battery via Maskrom mode, as per the instructions in the blue box on the PPP wiki here: https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_Pro#Boot_order ,

Download "pine64-pinephonePro-2021.10-004.tar.xz" from https://github.com/Tow-Boot/Tow-Boot/releases ,

Open "pine64-pinephonePro-2021.10-004.tar.xz" with 7-zip (or whatever you use) and extract the contents: "pine64-pinephonePro-2021.10-004.tar",

Similarly Open "pine64-pinephonePro-2021.10-004.tar" and extract the contents: "pine64-pinephonePro-2021.10-004",

The directory should contain: "spi.installer.img", among other things.

Flash only the: "spi.installer.img" to your SD Card,

Unplug the USB-C cable from the phone,

Remove the battery,

Press the power button to discharge any capacitors &-or static,

Insert the SD Card with Tow-Boot on it,

Reinsert the battery,

Press-and-hold RE,

In addition to holding RE, press-and-hold Vol Down,

In addition to holding both RE and Vol Down, short-press (maybe 1 sec, or so) the Power Button,

The phone should immediately vibrate, make the faint "pop" sound and the LED should turn Red,

The instant the LED changes from Red to Green (it skips Yellow if your battery is above 90% charged, I think), release both the Vol Down and RE,

It should load straight into Tow-Boot's GUI,

The GUI will remind you to plug the USB-C in,

Plug the USB-C cable back into the phone,

Select the Install option on the screen,

Tow-Boot should install in under 5 sec.

From there, just follow Tow-Boot's post-install instruction.

If the stock Bootloader and Manjoro OS are still on the phone's eMMC, be sure to unplug the USB-C cable as soon as the screen goes completely black, as it may interpret the USB-C's presence as "Power-On".