Update issues

[For_lack_of_a_better_name]

I just got my phone yesterday, and I went to update it after setting it up, and every time I try to update it, it says the package daemon has crashed. What should I do?

[tckosvic]

It would be more helpful if you gave a description of what commands you are running and what you see on ths screen.

Myself and others have found locked files needed for pacman update, Try command below and see if update does connect to repos.

sudo rm /var/lib/pacman/db.lck

Just a guess as to whether this my get your updates better but give it a whirl

tom kosvic

tom kosvic

[deFANG'd]

I just got my phone yesterday, and I went to update it after setting it up, and every time I try to update it, it says the package daemon has crashed. What should I do?

Serious question. Will it still boot?

[Fred Zyphal]

Same issue here ... I've been trying to update through "Discover" because I get a popup every time I boot, and I'm stuck in an endless loop, it always comes back to wanting to update the same system package, but can't find it. I haven't tried pacman in a terminal window yet, I hope that will solve the problem.

[andrewp907]

I am getting the same behavior with Discover as Fred right above me.

[fxc]

I am getting the same behavior with Discover as Fred right above me.

Andrew and Fred: your OS got corrupted due to an update, that's a known issue and unfortunately is quite common with the months old release which is flashed to the early adopters batch. To fix the issue do these two steps:

1) Charge the battery in Maskrom mode for multiple hours as explained in the blue info box here: https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_P...structions

2) After charging the phone, flash a microSD card with a fresh image as explained under https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_P...croSD_card. Make sure you put the microSD card in the top slot and that you flash an image for the Pro (not for the regular PinePhone) and that you flash the whole microSD card, not to partition 1. Hold the RE button at boot to boot from microSD card! If it does not boot right away from microSD card please make sure to hold power and RE for a longer time and you can also try to shortly remove the battery prior to make sure it is not still running in Maskrom mode.

If that does not work please join the community chat to debug the issue, https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Main_Page#Chat_Platforms

[Fred Zyphal]

I am getting the same behavior with Discover as Fred right above me.

After charging the phone, flash a microSD card with a fresh image

Thanks fxc, flashing the eMMC with a fresh image was going to be my next step, and it of course works, I just hadn't figured out how to do that on the Pro yet.

btw, using Pacman from the terminal window was only a partial success, it got me past the issue of trying to download a package that was not available, but the popup window kept coming, even though it did nothing at that point.

[For_lack_of_a_better_name]

I just got my phone yesterday, and I went to update it after setting it up, and every time I try to update it, it says the package daemon has crashed. What should I do?

Serious question. Will it still boot?

Yes, it does.

[Fred Zyphal]

I am getting the same behavior with Discover as Fred right above me.

After charging the phone, flash a microSD card with a fresh image

Thanks fxc, flashing the eMMC with a fresh image was going to be my next step, and it of course works, I just hadn't figured out how to do that on the Pro yet.

btw, using Pacman from the terminal window was only a partial success, it got me past the issue of trying to download a package that was not available, but the popup window kept coming, even though it did nothing at that point.

A couple of things here:

Flashing the eMMC is done by booting to a uSD card and using dd copy to copy a new image over to eMMC.  Easy except for the fact that if you hold the RE button too long after getting it to boot from the uSD card, it somehow prevents the eMMC from initializing (as documented in the Wiki), so you don't have access and you can't copy anything to it.  I found that the timing is very tight, you have to hold the RE button for at least 5 seconds in order to get it to boot from the uSD card, but if you hold it for 6 seconds it's too long and the eMMC won't initialize, we're talking a fraction of a second here.  So here's what you do ... I discovered that if you just hold the damn button for as long as you want, let it boot to the uSD card, then press and hold the power button and choose "Restart", it restarts to the operating system on the uSD card (where you just pressed restart from) without holding the RE button at all, and of course this time the eMMC is initialized and available because you didn't even touch the RE button.

Apologies ... I swear the technique above worked multiple times the other day, now I can't get it to work again at all ... still playing, I might figure it out.

Also, after flashing the latest and greatest image (I used Beta11), you still get the popup window warning about an update that didn't happen at the initial boot, but everything is updated and Discover works just fine.  So my method of using Pacman through a terminal window actually did work, it got me to the same place as flashing the latest version.

It's all ok, I learned stuff, like how to easily boot to uSD and flash the eMMC.