Very buggy - and update update update... loop

[programmin1]

After having a family member set up a Pinephone, there were multiple issues...

Unlocking the screen would not always work but force reboot with power button and then the screen would unlock with the code.

The terminal would show the user chosen password to be the selected user name!? and switching away from terminal involves swiping from top then bottom, very unreliably.

The update mechanism would just say there are updates, after hitting the button it downloads, lets you reboot to update, then say there are updates, after hitting the button it downloads, lets you reboot to update.... I have never had any Linux OS have to have you reboot multiple times three times and still say there are updates, just to do the regular updates so I think maybe something is not updating at all...

Do I just have an old build or are these really not ready for even updating and using as a development device with this OS right now?

[ghost]

The Pinephones are edge products for developers and fanatics. Especially the Manjaro Plasma can become very unstable after certain updates and later it comes back to "normal".

The best way of updating is by totally forgetting the Discover application and giving the following command in the terminal.

sudo pacman -Syuu

Some updates require a restart like when updating the kernel, various components of the Plasma etc.

The phone can crash or restart anytime especially if you are running multiple browsers like Angelfish and Konqueror, don't expect a stable performance like with Android or iphone.

As time passes you will get used to it, try to concentrate on understanding the phone, reading the forums, the specifications, the datasheets, trying OSes etc, this is the point of such projects.

The pop-up notification that there are new updates will continue to appear but ignore it.

It is useful to have another OS in the SD card like Manjaro Phosh and switch in case your Plasma becomes unusable until it is fixed completely by the updates.

Many problems can persist for months or years like the problem with Plasma detecting the modem. Phosh always works.

[programmin1]

Thanks. Phosh is what Librem5 uses right? Because that seems more stable. Can you point to a guide to reformat Pinephone with Manjaro-Phosh (I am not sure why that is not default install?)

[ghost]

Phosh is Gnome and I think it's been developed by Librem.

Download from here and flash it the same way

https://github.com/manjaro-pinephone/phosh

[ghost]

let's say you have booted from the eMMC and you want to install it on the SD

open the terminal and give the 'lsblk' command, the SD is mmcblk0, you should not have any mounted directories, that is the mountpoints should be empty for mmcblk0, if you have downloaded the image Manjaro-ARM-phosh-pinephone-beta23.img.xz then you can decompress it and flash it with the following command

xzcat Manjaro-ARM-phosh-pinephone-beta23.img.xz | sudo dd bs=4M of=/dev/mmcblk0 iflag=fullblock oflag=direct status=progress; sync

now you can reboot and it will first search the SD, if it finds an OS it will boot from there else it will boot from the eMMC

[programmin1]

Thanks but I don't think I have any sudo ability within the phone - the bug with the password being the username for whatever reason and sudo didn't work last I tried on it...

[ghost]

download the image on your PC and flash it to the SD with the same commands or with a Windows application that can burn images on a USB etc

[programmin1]

That seems like not the right command:

gzip: /home/.../Manjaro-ARM-phosh-pinephone-beta23.img.xz: not in gzip format

[ghost]

the xzcat decompresses the .xz archive and dumps it (cat) to the dd command through a pipeline

make sure through a checksum that the archive is not corrupted

make sure you have installed the xz utility with all of its dependencies

you can check the type of the file with

file your_file.xz

have a look here

https://itsfoss.com/how-solve-stdin-gzip-format/

[programmin1]

Thank you, I saw that just clicking and opening the file with the default disk tool does the job and lets you select and flash the image to an SD.

https://howtotrainyourrobot.com/pinephone-setup-the-more-stable-version-with-phosh/

[ghost]

yes, it should work, I always use the terminal to have as much control as possible on the system and I don't know much of the applications