Librem 5 Birch, questions about reflashing the phone

Librem Phones (Librem 5)
1

Just got my hands on a Librem 5 Birch. Now the fun begins!

First I would like to learn how to reflash the phone with the latest software. This page https://docs.puri.sm/Librem_5/Troubleshooting.html points to the instructions here:

https://developer.puri.sm/Librem5/Development_Environment/Phone/Troubleshooting/Reflashing_the_Phone.html

There, under “Download the System and U-Boot Images” it says I should “download the latest plain librem5 amber-phone image, which is provided as an librem5.img.xz file”. But the Image Build page

https://arm01.puri.sm/job/Images/job/Image%20Build/

seems to have two different “plain librem5 amber-phone” images, called librem5r2.img.xz and librem5r3.img.xz – what’s the difference, and which one should I use?

Also, the script in uuu_scripts/flash_librem5.lst that is to be used to flash the image seems to have the filename librem5.img hard-coded, so to make it work I need to either rename the file or change the filename in the script?

I did manage to reflash using the librem5r3.img.xz file (assuming “newer is better”) and changing librem5.img to librem5r3.img.xz in the uuu_scripts/flash_librem5.lst script, that seemed to work but I’m not sure if it’s the right way to do it.

Then I would also like to learn how to build the image myself starting from the source code, are there instructions for that somewhere?

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FWIW, if it were me, I would have downloaded that same file but renamed it instead of changing it in the script. Same end result, though, and the moral of the story is -I- at least agree with your rationale.

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We have recently renamed the images because of the introduction of Dogwood batch. The documentation still needs to be updated though.

For Birch, you want to use the librem5r2.img image (r2 means Chestnut, which Birch is 100% compatible with). If you had a Dogwood device, you would use a librem5r3.img one.

For building the image by yourself, see https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/image-builder/

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