If you have a spare USB drive, you can use it to flash a PureOS image, then boot it instead of Windows so you can continue to follow the steps mentioned above. These instructions below will get you to the end of the flashing process.
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OK I downloaded pureOS on the fresh USB drive I got yesterday.
Upon checking everything before doing the reflash procedure, my phone is now completely dead. No response to any key press. Battery is checked and fully charged, making contact to the phone. Also, USB-C cable is powered and switched from a working other device to my Librem 5. No effect, phone remains dead.
I could really use some pointers here what to try next. Not my best Xmas.
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Did not work.
And me, who is new on linux would need to ask here if there is someone who could assist me tru mirroring flashing my now unresponsive librem 5? I looked at it aand understood nothing. The phone itself is not found being connected to computer, niether macbook nor windows thinkpad. I have been in contact with support but nothing there but frustration. Sending me twice about the external keyboard witch did not respong at all. And twice sending me link to flash. But im no tech dude and dont understand. So is there a possibility to flash through mirroring? Please let me know. I told support to make something like that but no respense so far. Have no idea if it would work. But some phone companies have that resource availible. Connecting the phone and reinstalling where the webpage finds/looks for the phone and do the work.
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did not work. Totally unresponsive. This sucks greatly! I want a new phone! And send the wrecked phone back to purism!!!
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Looks like you and me are in the same boat. Let’s wait for a response before we totally panic and freak out.
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Initialize the reflashing script to see the below message:
- Ensure that the phone is powered off
- Turn all Hardware-Kill-Switches off
- Unplug the USB cable if connected
- Remove battery
- Hold volume-up button
- Insert the USB-C cable (red light blinks, no green light)
- Reinsert the battery (red and green lights constantly on, the script will continue)
- Release volume-up button
Follow the instructions while paying close attention to the changing LED light near the top right of the Librem 5 screen. If it does not show any indication of activity, I suggest continuing to follow up with Purism support to have them troubleshoot your phone.
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I have run into the same issue. However, I was updating from the terminal and can add more details. Close to the end of installing updates, the lock screen suddenly activated. I assume that a process restarted with the lock screen activation. However, the usual (the default) password was not working anymore. I switched to a tty with Ctrl+Alt+F4 or something and tried pureos with the default password. I waited a bit for a reasonable time in case any configuration continued in the background, and held the power button to power off the phone. However, neither an on-screen nor a USB keyboard seems to input anything into the disk decryption dialogue before boot.
Before that, I changed the repositories to crimson (see below). However, there were some updates that I did not apply for Byzantium. Now you have a similar issue. So, I assume it may be in the latest updates for Byzantium.
I have read in the forum that Crimson is newer than Byzantium. I replaced all three occurrences of byzantium with crimson in /etc/apt/sources.list and ran:
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt dist-upgrade
The proposed upgrade seemed reasonable. Unfortunately, I cannot report on the result.
My next step is to try to flash the phone with uuu.
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Nope, no lights blinking so looks like the phone is totally bricked.
Thanks for all the help, this goes to Purism support for further instructions.
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So to be clear is there anything on the screen at that point? In other words is the screen blank or can you photograph the screen and post it here?
I’m unclear what you mean by this?
Yes, there is a process for reflashing the phone. The upside is that the process should work regardless of the state of the software on the phone at the moment. The downside is that you will lose all content that is currently on the phone.
An alternative is to use Jumpdrive in order to investigate the current state of the software on the phone, and thereby potentially to fix the current state.
However either reflash or Jumpdrive requires you to have a working other Linux computer. Do you have such a computer?
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That is how I see it in my case. I made a photo below. I expect circle symbols to show up when typing. I further expect the phone to boot when hitting OK or Enter. Neither happens.
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Yes, but there are technically at least two codenames for Crimson: landing and crimson, used for the Librem 5 and 11, respectively. You used the incorrect codename for your device, assumed you can use dist-upgrade, and also assumed that LUKS encryption/decryption is still supported, when the latest built Crimson images for the Librem 5 on Jenkins use the plain variant.
https://arm01.puri.sm/job/Images/job/Image%20Builds%20landing/
Before you go off making more assumptions and executing commands, answer these questions:
- Do you want to recover your Librem 5 files using Jumpdrive?
- Do you want to use Byzantium or Crimson on your Librem 5?
- What is the codename of your Librem 5 batch?
… and “do you know how to?” 
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I do not want to recover any files. I copied all important data from the device before experimenting. However, I may try Jumpdrive to see if it works and report here.
If possible, I would like to install a different distribution and see how it goes. However, I need to learn and start with something that is supposed to work. So, reflashing Byzantium seems like an appropriate thing to try first.
Evergreen.
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Okay, follow these instructions to flash Byzantium.
Once you are done appreciating the stability of Byzantium, you can use my instructions below to reflash the Librem 5 with Crimson instead.
If you want to get an idea of how Crimson is on the Librem 5, you can check out my most recent thread about it.
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No i have no computer at all. Was using my librem 5 as main everything. So im waiting patiently for PURISM do come up with a solution. I planned for future to get hands on librem 14 or mini. But that has to wait for now.
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That is not good.
Yes, in that case, you will have to contact Purism Support (as you have done) and hope that they can do something.
In theory if the disk contents on your phone are not too badly borked then Purism Support could send you a bootable µSD card. (If you had a computer then you could make your own such card.)
In my opinion everyone with a Librem 5 should have a regular computer as well because you want some way to back up the contents of the phone and, more importantly, some way to restore the contents if something goes wrong.
Of course, you can use the iPhone backup approach and back up your files into the custody of Apple but, well, if you were concerned with privacy in the first place then you wouldn’t do that on an iPhone, since you have no way of auditing anything about that process - and Apple has publicly said that they scan any files that you upload to them.
There are alternative backup models e.g. have no contents on the Librem 5 and access everything on your private cloud (presumed not to be self-hosted at home) - but it would still be desirable to have some way of reflashing the Librem 5, and that requires a regular computer.
I have not tested this but I believe that you can use a Raspberry Pi for the two functions of reflashing and backup/restore - so that is a way of getting those functions at relatively low cost.
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I got PureOS and it works fine on my PC.
Total Linux noob now taking the baby steps as described here
https://developer.puri.sm/Librem5/Development_Environment/Phone/Troubleshooting/Reflashing_the_Phone.html#download-the-flashing-scripts
And first command get me this:
git clone Librem5 / librem5-flash-image · GitLab
Could not find command-not-found database. Run ‘sudo apt update’ to populate it.
Then I ran sudo apt update. Lots of scrolling text
Get:1 Index of /pureos/ byzantium InRelease [9641 B]
Get:2 Index of /pureos/ byzantium-security InRelease [9650 B]
Get:3 Index of /pureos/ byzantium-updates InRelease [9649 B]
Get:4 Index of /pureos/ byzantium/main amd64 Packages [3743 kB]
Get:5 Index of /pureos/ byzantium/main all Packages [3344 kB]
Ign:6 Index of /pureos/ byzantium/main Translation-en
Ign:7 Index of /pureos/ byzantium/main amd64 DEP-11 Metadata
Ign:8 Index of /pureos/ byzantium/main all DEP-11 Metadata
Ign:9 Index of /pureos/ byzantium/main DEP-11 48x48 Icons
Ign:10 Index of /pureos/ byzantium/main DEP-11 64x64 Icons
Get:11 Index of /pureos/ byzantium-security/main all Packages [52.9 kB]
Get:12 Index of /pureos/ byzantium-security/main amd64 Packages [75.2 kB]
Ign:13 Index of /pureos/ byzantium-security/main Translation-en
Ign:14 Index of /pureos/ byzantium-security/main all DEP-11 Metadata
Ign:15 Index of /pureos/ byzantium-security/main amd64 DEP-11 Metadata
Ign:16 Index of /pureos/ byzantium-security/main DEP-11 48x48 Icons
Ign:17 Index of /pureos/ byzantium-security/main DEP-11 64x64 Icons
Get:18 Index of /pureos/ byzantium-updates/main amd64 Packages [8928 B]
Get:19 Index of /pureos/ byzantium-updates/main all Packages [4636 B]
Ign:20 Index of /pureos/ byzantium-updates/main Translation-en
Ign:21 Index of /pureos/ byzantium-updates/main all DEP-11 Metadata
Ign:22 Index of /pureos/ byzantium-updates/main amd64 DEP-11 Metadata
Ign:23 Index of /pureos/ byzantium-updates/main DEP-11 48x48 Icons
Ign:24 Index of /pureos/ byzantium-updates/main DEP-11 64x64 Icons
Get:6 Index of /pureos/ byzantium/main Translation-en [5684 kB]
Get:7 Index of /pureos/ byzantium/main amd64 DEP-11 Metadata [2708 kB]
Get:8 Index of /pureos/ byzantium/main all DEP-11 Metadata [344 kB]
Get:9 Index of /pureos/ byzantium/main DEP-11 48x48 Icons [3353 kB]
Get:10 Index of /pureos/ byzantium/main DEP-11 64x64 Icons [7024 kB]
Get:13 Index of /pureos/ byzantium-security/main Translation-en [73.3 kB]
Get:14 Index of /pureos/ byzantium-security/main all DEP-11 Metadata [212 B]
Get:15 Index of /pureos/ byzantium-security/main amd64 DEP-11 Metadata [47.6 kB]
Get:16 Index of /pureos/ byzantium-security/main DEP-11 48x48 Icons [20.8 kB]
Get:17 Index of /pureos/ byzantium-security/main DEP-11 64x64 Icons [35.8 kB]
Get:20 Index of /pureos/ byzantium-updates/main Translation-en [8780 B]
Get:21 Index of /pureos/ byzantium-updates/main all DEP-11 Metadata [796 B]
Get:22 Index of /pureos/ byzantium-updates/main amd64 DEP-11 Metadata [2480 B]
Get:23 Index of /pureos/ byzantium-updates/main DEP-11 48x48 Icons [4856 B]
Get:24 Index of /pureos/ byzantium-updates/main DEP-11 64x64 Icons [6083 B]
Fetched 26.6 MB in 3s (8537 kB/s)
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree… Done
Reading state information… Done
173 packages can be upgraded. Run ‘apt list --upgradable’ to see them.
If someone please could tell me what went wrong and what to do next? Seems I Really need step by step guidance here
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You are doing fine. The documentation is lacking a very simple step:
sudo apt install git
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Well that worked, I now have a working albeit clean Librem5 again. Now time to reconfigure and make a backup, because thats something I learned the hard way.
Thanks for all your help.
Adel, if I can do this, so can you
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@michel_souris and @adel
Here’s a good command line guide for beginners. You can actually download an entire book about it as a pdf from the Conclusion section:
https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/command-line-for-beginners#1-overview
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