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

[lllsondowlll]

EDIT: And Tow-Boot has single handedly fixed suspend and wake from suspend on PinePhone Pro. This feels like Christmas, no more dead battery after a couple of hours.

How much longer does it seem to run off battery?

Gives it like 3-4 extra hours with the phone asleep. Only Arch and Mobian seem to work with suspend. Manjaro not quite there yet unfortunately as it fails to wake still.

[xnopasaranx]

Wow, this has pretty much fixed my suspend/wake problems! Have been running this bootloader for 4 days as of now and I think it's stable enough. I wonder what is missing for them to make a proper release?

EDIT: I also have sound issues after waking up the ppp (no sound on calls, sampling rate misconfigured). Don't think this is related to tow-boot though.

[brb78]

Does this/can this change the boot priority to sdcard-first?

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what about the forced boot-on-power situation that seems to result in a boot loop at 0% battery? does this make a dead phone JUST charge and not also try to boot as soon as a power source is connected?

[dukla2000]

Does this/can this change the boot priority to sdcard-first?
...

No - the boot priority is set by Rockchip and is SPI, eMMC, SDcard (see here, there is no reason to expect the RK3399s is any different.)

But Yes - if/when you have Tow-boot on the SPI, then Tow-boot is the first thing to boot (currently indicated by a red light on PPP). However Tow-boot ambition in life is to find an OS, it's default is the eMMC but if you are holding Volume Down then it will try the SDcard first.

[talpa]

Does this/can this change the boot priority to sdcard-first?
...

No - the boot priority is set by Rockchip and is SPI, eMMC, SDcard (see here, there is no reason to expect the RK3399s is any different.)

But Yes - if/when you have Tow-boot on the SPI, then Tow-boot is the first thing to boot (currently indicated by a red light on PPP). However Tow-boot ambition in life is to find an OS, it's default is the eMMC but if you are holding Volume Down then it will try the SDcard first.

Holding volume up  for turning the phone into a usb mass storage device exposing the eMMC is also a nice addition.
(even if it is quite slow)

[u-kidjp]

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

[dukla2000]

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

If you have the original factory (Manjaro) installation on eMMC then your SDcard has not been built correctly. The spi-installer.img will boot from SDcard, as per video in 1st post, if installed OK.

[lllsondowlll]

Try holding volume down when booting phone to get into the installer. The installer itself uses Tow-boot to boot itself and vol down is boot from SD card.

[xnopasaranx]

this is a real nice piece of software! I have been using it for over a week now, right now I am using the mass storage mode to flash arch to emmc.

[janjaapmeijer]

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

I think the Explorer Edition does not have SPI storage.
Therefore I am not sure if this works yet, but maybe others can update me on that?