Ubuntu Touch installation guide

[bcnaz]

Just a quick Question about the UBPorts information on the Pine phone project.
( bit of a newbie on some of the discussion )

When I look at the UBPorts site via the Pine links  I get a completely different 'View'    
  Than when I use a 'link'  from a youtube video to get there...?

DO I need to 'sign-up' and 'log-in' to get a better view or access to their website  ?

THANKS

[dukla2000]

I would say copying the data is one thing... even for it, dd is not a right tool, you may want to simply copy all files while preserving permissions.

The benefit of dd is that it will duplicate the disk partition layout.

Do you happen to know how the eMMC will be presented? Does one boot the image from the SD card and then run dd from the phone? Or is there a way to mount the device as mass storage on a computer and run dd from there?

Would there be a single partition to write the image to? Because I'm a bit worried to - for instance - overwrite U-Boot or something similar.

No idea on the partition layout: it seems to be release dependant, e.g. on my RockPro64 the ayufan releases use 7 partitions on the disk, 1 for boot,1 for root and 5 others, whereas a Manjaro image implements a single partition.

Yup - I imagine booting from the SDcard then using dd to clone the SDcard (may well be /dev/mmcblk0 as per the RockPro64?) to the eMMC (may well be /dev/mmcblk1 as per theRockPro64?). Will be 1 good reason to have an 8Gb SDcard (or smaller) lying around :-)

Certainly 1 of my arm SBCs has presented the eMMC as a device in a special boot mode, offhand I cannot remember which. I know the Allwinner chips have a FEL mode which seems that it could be useful t get a PinePhone mounted as mass storage though.

Hopefully not too many more days until we can actually answer this stuff definitively!

PS - I just built myself a postmarketOS SDcard using the pmbootstrap script and notice 2 things:
1) pmOS creates 2 partitions on the SDcard, boot & root.
2) The pm bootstrap script already can build your eMMC from your SDcard after booting if you want. See here - postmarketOS may be installed onto the eMMC by running pmbootstrap install --sdcard=/dev/mmcblk... from a Linux distribution booted via the microSD card.

[VaZso]

I would say copying the data is one thing... even for it, dd is not a right tool, you may want to simply copy all files while preserving permissions.

The benefit of dd is that it will duplicate the disk partition layout.

I don't really know what are you mean about benefit. If you would like to create the same partition table, you can easily do it without dd.
Also, it is not necessary to keep the same size of partitions.

The drawback of using dd is to copy absolutely the same data so not only partition structure and data on them but every unnecessary bits which is generally not a good idea on something which has limited amount of write cycles (I am speaking about eMMC).

[bcnaz]

Rather than "DD" is Etcher ok for flashing to an SD card ?

Thanks BC

[wibble]

Rather than "DD"    is Etcher ok for flashing to an SD card  ?

Thanks  BC

Yes

[noeman5]

Rather than "DD"    is Etcher ok for flashing to an SD card  ?

Thanks  BC

Yes

I use Etcher all the time.  Easy to use, works well, no issues.

[Pirm0]

noeman5

Rather than "DD"    is Etcher ok for flashing to an SD card  ?

Thanks  BC

Yes

Hi everyone, just got my phone last night and I thought I'd share one handy tip.

For anyone working with a really small micro-SD card (mine is 2GB) here is a handy way to get Ubuntu touch installed on the eMMC:

1. install postmarketOS on your SD, so, on your computer:
   $ pmbootstrap init # NOTE: for 'ui' select 'none'$ pmbootstrap install --sdcard=/dev/sdX # where sdX is your SD card
2. plug SD card into phone, boot into postmarketOS
   
3. on your computer, download Ubuntu touch .img file, shoud be around 4GB)
   
4. copy .img over to the 16GB eMMC: 
   dd bs=4M if=ubuntu-touch-pinephone.img | ssh -t user@172.16.42.1 "sudo dd of=/dev/mmcblk2 status=progress"
5. turn off phone, remove sd card, boot into eMMC, done!
   

[bcnaz]

Rather than "DD"    is Etcher ok for flashing to an SD card  ?

Thanks  BC

Question :
Above the .img.gz download :

ubuntu-touch-pinephone.img.bmap    3.98kb

ubuntu-touch-pinephone.img.gz         1.01GB

What is the ' img.bmap    3.98kb '    download for ?

[Goddard]

I made an install script. It removes a few steps.

https://github.com/goddard/pinephone

[bcnaz]

 
   What is with the UBPorts download page ?

    Saturday my first download of #216 worked great first try.

   Today (Sunday)  I have tried over twenty times and Download #217  "FAILS"  before it even gets very far...

                       

Finally, I did get it,
I have also downloaded 218 as well since.
Using GUI, I am unable to get UT to see my brand new AT&T sim card... wifi works great, though no sound yet.
(Post Market see's my AT&T sim, but I cannot access it, but they have sound.! )

ALSO of NOTE :
I am using Etcher to flash my SD cards, it goes pretty slow using the SD card slot on my computer,
BUT, using a usb to SD card adapter, it completes the process in just minutes !

********* I thought I should share that ****