Tow-boot on Pinephone beta edition

[saddamus]

Did anyone managed to make tow-boot working on pinephone beta edition ?
I tried releases for pinephone and pinephone pro, flashing to SD card, but none of them was working. There is no reaction on pressing power button - not even blinking led light. I wanted to test Mobian, but there is no way without working tow-boot.

[shulamy]

Did anyone managed to make tow-boot working on pinephone beta edition ?
I tried releases for pinephone and pinephone pro, flashing to SD card, but none of them was working. There is no reaction on pressing power button - not even blinking led light. I wanted to test Mobian, but there is no way without working tow-boot.

 what do you mean by "working" ?

 i have manjaro and tow-boot on the emmc that boots fine

 but i cant boot from sd with p-boot or with wiped u-boot

(i have a thread on this)

 ezik

[saddamus]

Now I'm a bit lost.
I wanted to test Mobian, but for this the phone has to be flashed with tow-boot. I have downloaded the tow-boot image and flashed to SD card. Before the SD card was flashed with Jumpdrive. 
So what I have finally done is flashed EMC with mobian and SD with tow-boot. After this operation, phone does not react on power button at all - not even blinking.  Not sure if this is right after your question, but i assume, there should be at least some reaction - even if system couldnt boot, there should be some sign of live from tow-boot residing on SD card - am I right ?

[shulamy]

Now I'm a bit lost.
I wanted to test Mobian, but for this the phone has to be flashed with tow-boot. I have downloaded the tow-boot image and flashed to SD card. Before the SD card was flashed with Jumpdrive. 
So what I have finally done is flashed EMC with mobian and SD with tow-boot. After this operation, phone does not react on power button at all - not even blinking.  Not sure if this is right after your question, but i assume, there should be at least some reaction - even if system couldnt boot, there should be some sign of live from tow-boot residing on SD card - am I right ?

 i think you can't install tow-boot to sd. the image is for flashing to emmc

 i don't know what happens if you flash mobian to sd (i'll try it)

 when you boot the tow-boot image it tells you to flash to emmc

 and maybe the mobian image is withuot boot loader because pinephone boots from sd first

 ezik

[saddamus]

This is right, mobian doesnt have bootloader, but tow-boot does not boot the phone, regardless if its on SD or EMC. Volume up + power, volume down + power or power does not bring any reaction.
Is your device beta edition  with 3gb of ram ?

[shulamy]

This is right, mobian doesnt have bootloader, but tow-boot does not boot the phone, regardless if its on SD or EMC. Volume up + power, volume down + power or power does not bring any reaction.
Is your device beta edition  with 3gb of ram ?

 for me it doe's boot. now i have tow-boot and manjaro on the emmc and latest mobian on the sd

 untouched it boots to manjaro end with volume down it boots to mobian

 and it is beta edition (with 2gb)

 the light color and the vibration are as expected

 red - vibrate - yellow for emmc boot  and rered - vibrate - aqua for sd boot

 are you sure tow-boot is installed correctly on emmc ?

 i think you got all wrong

 tow-boot should be copyed to the emmc that may have any OS, and then insert sd with mobian

 ezik

https://tow-boot.org/devices/pine64-pinephoneA64.html

ezik

[mark1250]

When I went to install tow-boot onto my Pinephone A64, I wasn't really paying attention to the file I downloaded. I just used xzcat and piped it to dd and wrote it to my SD card. And, it didn't work. After scratching my head a bit, I finally realized that the file you download contains 2 disk images and is not directly flashable.

When you download tow-boot from github: https://github.com/Tow-Boot/Tow-Boot/rel...005.tar.xz you have to extract it.

I used: unxz pine64-pinephoneA64-2021.10-005.tar.xz

Then  untar the tar file: tar -xf pine64-pinephoneA64-2021.10-005.tar

- There is probably a single command that will do this, but I was too lazy to look it up.

You'll end up with a folder with 2 .img files. dd or etcher... the mmcboot.installer.img image file to your SD card. Pop the SD card into your Pinephone and the tow-boot installer should boot and an install menu will appear on the phone screen.

Because the Pinephone A64 looks for the boot loader on the SD card then eMMC, it will boot off an SD card that has u-boot on it. If you don't want this you'll have to remove u-boot from the SD card. There are instructions on the wiki: https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_I..._from_eMMC

[shulamy]

When I went to install tow-boot onto my Pinephone A64, I wasn't really paying attention to the file I downloaded. I just used xzcat and piped it to dd and wrote it to my SD card. And, it didn't work. After scratching my head a bit, I finally realized that the file you download contains 2 disk images and is not directly flashable.

When you download tow-boot from github: https://github.com/Tow-Boot/Tow-Boot/rel...005.tar.xz you have to extract it.

I used: unxz pine64-pinephoneA64-2021.10-005.tar.xz

Then  untar the tar file: tar -xf pine64-pinephoneA64-2021.10-005.tar

- There is probably a single command that will do this, but I was too lazy to look it up.

You'll end up with a folder with 2 .img files. dd or etcher... the mmcboot.installer.img image file to your SD card. Pop the SD card into your Pinephone and the tow-boot installer should boot and an install menu will appear on the phone screen.

Because the Pinephone A64 looks for the boot loader on the SD card then eMMC, it will boot off an SD card that has u-boot on it. If you don't want this you'll have to remove u-boot from the SD card. There are instructions on the wiki: https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_I..._from_eMMC

 did those instractions work for you ?

 ezik

[saddamus]

Haven't tried yet, but I will and gonna let you know. Thanx for clarification.

[Chief]

I flashed towboot .img to an SD card on my laptop. Inserted SD card and then started device. I selected the option to install towboot. Once completed I shut down device (power-off) and removed SD card. That was the end of any SD card in my Pinephone. I flash whatever I want now with my laptop and Balena Etcher and a usb cable.