USB Mass Storage is functional and makes EMMC installs very easy

[mestermagyar]

I just want to give a quick heads up that boot-tools, which has a script for the pine64 and pinebook to boot into UMS mode through FEL, is working with the Pinephone. 

The only way of accessing FEL for the pinephone is by having a microsd boot into FEL. There I found the image which you have to burn onto your SD as explained. Then you have to turn on the phone while being connected to your PC. When you "lsusb" and see a new device, for me it is recognised as an Onda v972, it means you succesfully booted into FEL mode. You can also check it with "sunxi-fel version" (binary from sunxi-tools) just in case. From that point foward, you just have to run the boot-tools script in order to set it up.


I used "make pinebook_ums" (over pine64_ums) to make it work. Yesterday it failed to do anything, but the gist of it might be that you have to take out the battery for it to work. Also try pine64_ums in case the other one is problematic.


I found out about FEL and UMS from some comment under a post on reddit, so the credit shall go to them. This post is just a heads up that it actually works.

[mestermagyar]

Silly question but can you use something like etcher to safely write images to the emmc this way?

I dont see what could go wrong. The EMMC memory is mounted as a regular storage device, that can be written and read at ease. There is nothing exposed that would mess your device up according to my knowledge.


One thing I became wary of since, is that it might not be in your best interest to flash onto the EMMC when swapping distros frequently. It uses NAND technology afterall, and it might fail on you sooner with no ability to swap. Experiment on SD, use EMMC when you are planning on using something for an extended period.