Is it possible to flash a librem 5 (USA) from windows 11 ?
this is the only os available for me now
1 Like
Random thought although maybe less helpful than what others will have to say:
If you have or can buy a cheap SD card, the L5 will boot the SD if you hold vol down while booting. I’ve used this as a dual boot for my L5. If your L5 that you want to reflash is partially functioning, you could put an SD card in it and flash the SD with the L5 itself by just using dd, then boot the SD card for a while until you flash the main EMMC. I have not tried flashing the EMMC from the L5 itself whilst booted from SD so I don’t know if there’s some reason not to do that. But you could at least boot cleanly from the SD for a while until you figure out flashing.
2 Likes
I am not sure if there are Window-specific instructions, but I imagine the existing Linux instructions will work under WSL.
1 Like
the uuu/mfgtools are available for windows10 at least not sure about 11, but you’d probably have to rewrite the script around it used for the flashing of the Librem5 yourself.
I’d try to run Ubuntu from a USB stick on the windows11 device and do it with that.
I don’t think WSL will work in this scenario with the USB interface since the whole flashing procedure is quite timing critical, and last time I checked WSL has no native access to the USB interfaces of the windows OS
3 Likes
What I have done: creating USB-stick with live Linux system from Librem 5 (easier than with Windows tools), start the live system from your PC and flash Librem 5.
Virtual Box with a Linux system also works fine.
As I said, I did both ways and that works very well with the known instructions. I did it on Win 10 (last system before I go completely to GNU/Linux), but that should not make any difference.
2 Likes
Thanks for your answer.
It seems to me an interesting way to go as only the L5 would be necessary :
- step 1 : burn a L5 iso on a SD
- step 2 : insert the SD into the L5 and boot on it
- step 3 : flash the EMMC with dd and the same iso
- step 4 : remove the SD and boot on the EMMC
do you think it is possible ?
Regards
1 Like
This would be my first option. Live Boot.
Alternatively, it has been suggested to me that you can flash one Librem 5 from another. I don’t have a second phone to try that out. 
Why do you want to do this? That is, what problem are you attempting to solve?
I am uncertain whether you will be able to boot from uSD if your Librem 5 is badly borked.
Just remember that in that case the two disks in the Librem 5 will probably end up with the same UUID - so you would indeed need to do as you suggest (remove uSD before booting eMMC). You can then re-randomise the UUID of the uSD once the Librem 5 can boot normally.
Given only Microsoft Windows, is that going to be easy?
1 Like
Yes, balena etcher is very easy
1 Like