Suddenly, nothing but a backlight and a boot logo flash
#1
I don't know why, but I can't get my phone booted now. It shows the Mobian logo for a second, then nothing but a backlight. I can't SSH in over USB — although that was already not working. I'm not sure where to go from here. Suggestions?
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#2
I would go for a serial cable to see what's going on. If not try to boot from the SD card.
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#3
Thanks, I ended up booting into JumpDrive and flashing the eMMC again. I think I just need to be prepared to flash once in a while.

I really wish I could figure out why ssh over USB stopped working, though. That used to work right out of the box.
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#4
If you would put on your SD card the multi boot image, you could boot jumpdrive but also a Mobian system. And could eventually check what's wrong on your emmc installation. I myself always have the multi boot image inserted since one can choose to boot from the emmc also. I love it!

I saw also quite a bunch of people having a corrupted f2fs filesystem. That also could be checked with booting from the SD card.
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#5
The Multi-Distro is pretty cool, but it is customized, it has a custom boot-loader.
It is supposed to give you an idea what the distro's look like, but they are derived from older releases.

NOT sure where you got your data on > "Bunch of people having a corrupted f2fs filesystem" ..?

I have not seen that mentioned on this forum, ... ever...!

I think, Mobian is still the only Pinephone operating system using the f2fs filesystem...
( I have been following Mobian since it was just called Debian.)

** When I searched your above quote in the forum, the one and only return was "Your Post"....

While I do agree that the ability to use an sd card to boot/ load/ troubleshoot the Pinephone is really handy.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
@3x5co

To the original Poster of this thread :
I would suggest trying some other distro's from an sd card, as it is a simple way to see if the phone performs properly on a different operating system.

* And can help discover if the problem is hardware or software related.
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#6
Well I have nothing against f2fs but I read on the chat rooms (Mobian and Pinephone) several people with corrupted filesystems with f2fs. If you switch off your phone uncleanly and have to connect a serial cable to get it back to life, that's not a sign of very solid filesystem. And the little I googled around f2fs is that it's not yet the best candidate for a phone. For example on the arch wiki it's written: " F2FS has a weak fsck that can lead to data loss in case of a sudden power loss. If power losses are frequent, consider an alternative file system. ". So personally I would use ext4 or btrfs.
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#7
Regarding p-boot multi-boot image, I find it very useful because the boot menu allows it to boot from emmc. So I just keep it always in my phone and when I switch it on, I choose emmc booting. I have much less risk to break the SD card slot and if my emmc system fails for whatever reason, I have other systems on the SD card to boot from.
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#8
As far as the micro-sd card holder goes, I have not kept track of how many times I have swapped sd cards in my 5 Pinephones

But it may be over a hundred times in some of them.

I have downloaded and flashed all the popular Distro's many times,....  almost 2 years ago I got my first Brave Heart phone.

((As I have extra Pinephones for testing, I do not have to depend on those test phones for communications))

I have downloaded and tried almost every Mobian 'Nightly Release'  -- now the 'weekly release'.

>> The micro-sd card holders in all of my phones are still working fine.
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#9
That happened  to me twice.

What helped in both cases was booting from an SD card and running
Code:
sudo fsck.f2fs -p /dev/mmcblk2p2

The first time it happened I was in real trouble because I was away from home and badly needed the phone. Ever since I have an SD card with the multi boot image in the phone as well (and a text file with that command in the documents directory of the mobian distro) so I can repair the eMMC if needed.
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