computer doesn't recognize pinephone for OS flashing

[Xzska-collab]

Hello 

I've bee here on this forum trying to learn whow to fix some issues on my pinephone. All these issues started when I was upgrading Mobian on the terminal and I mistakly removed the battery before it fished the upgrading. 

Problems:
1st. I was unable to log in, "Oh no, something went wrong..." message showed asking to log out.
2nd. Then Pinephone woulnd not turn on, even when plugged in, only the green light was on. 
3rd.  When plugged to the computer, the jumpdrive image appears on screen, but computer or Etcher do not recognize the pinephone (which is plugged in with the red a-c port cable of the Mobian CE I have).
4th. I am unable to boot from the micro SD card, phone only blink light on a black screen and I hear clicking, even after an hour, nothing change. 

I believe if the computer recognized the phone on jumpdrive I would be able to flash it, but it does not, and I do not know if there is any hope for my pinephone Mobian CE. 

Any suggestion?

[Xzska-collab]

1. never pull battery while phone is on
2. if you see jumpdrive on screen, you are basically booting from sd card
3. find correct path to pinephone via "sudo fdisk -l" on linux computer while phone is connected
4. just use "dd" via command line to write image to drive, more on https://wiki.mobian-project.org/doku.php?id=install
5. the clicking comes from the camera, i get that too while booting

Thank you for your reply. I perform step 3 in the computer terminal  and it displayed: 

Disk /dev/sda: 59.6 GiB, 64023257088 bytes, 125045424 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x7c9a118e

Device    Boot Start      End  Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sda1  *    2048 125044735 125042688 59.6G 83 Linux

Is the pinephone /dev/sda1/ ? or is the computer disk?

[Xzska-collab]

1. never pull battery while phone is on
2. if you see jumpdrive on screen, you are basically booting from sd card
3. find correct path to pinephone via "sudo fdisk -l" on linux computer while phone is connected
4. just use "dd" via command line to write image to drive, more on https://wiki.mobian-project.org/doku.php?id=install
5. the clicking comes from the camera, i get that too while booting

Thank you for your reply. I perform step 3 in the computer terminal  and it displayed: 

Disk /dev/sda: 59.6 GiB, 64023257088 bytes, 125045424 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x7c9a118e

Device    Boot Start      End  Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sda1  *    2048 125044735 125042688 59.6G 83 Linux

Is the pinephone /dev/sda1/ ? or is the computer disk?

it's not the pinephone.. maybe try to write the installer to the card

1. download "mobian-installer-pinephone-phosh-alpha5.img.gz" from https://images.mobian-project.org/pinephone/installer/
2. extract image from archive, write image to sd card and put it into the phone
3. boot and follow the steps on screen

 In the terminal I am not able to extract the installer img. so I used my Mac 2011 to burn the sd card with Etcher, both the jumpdrive and the OS. I first tried with Mobian, to see if the pinephone would boot from the sd card, but nothing happened..black screen and blinking green light. Then I tried with Arch, same thing... black screen and red flashing light. On the first boot when I received the phone I used a 2GB sd, which still have the jumpdrive on it and flashing the OS worked so well. Now, I am using a 256GB sd....I don't know why is booting the jumpdrive from the 2GB sd and not the OS from the 256GB, but I'll try to get a sd with less storage and try again, as well as, research more info on how to extract the image on my bodhi linux terminal. I thank you for your help

[Xzska-collab]

All the issues I've mentioned above were solved by simply using a new battery, and using a brand new 8G SD card to flash mobian. Because, I also have the beta edition of the pinephone, I used the new battery from the beta on my Mobian one, I follow the flashing steps using a new 8G SD card. I figured the terminal did not work because my Linux comp. is very old (Intel Atom) , so I just flashed with etcher on my old MAC.