I assume that you have done a Live Boot of Ubuntu on some computer that does not normally run Linux.
The correct value for of will be /dev/something where something has to be chosen very carefully - because you don’t want to overwrite the wrong disk! (and it is impossible to predict in advance, given the great diversity in people’s hardware configurations, what device name is the right disk).
Also, it is important that the empty or otherwise µSD card not be mounted when you do the dd - so usually you will want umount /media/ubuntu/something before doing the dd
If in doubt, do sudo fdisk -l /dev/somethingbefore doing the dd in order to confirm that the disk model and size are what you expect.
The disk image (uncompressed) is about 4.5 GB. So probably an 8 GB µSD card would be adequate for a Live Boot.
Now I have the .img on my SD card (with following all your intructions) but my phone still will not boot from it. The green light merely turns on and does not turn off, and the phone just stays in a black phase.
Are there more up to date instructions for updating uboot? I can not find a .deb file for uboot, only an.img or .imx? Can I use the same commend with either of these?
I’ve been trying all day to boot my Librem 5 from an SD card with the aim of making a fresh install of PureOS. I am trying this because the phone’s been malfunctioning since I tried to install Anbox. Since that time, I have been unable to successfully update via the PureOS Store or via apt.
Here’s what I’ve tried for booting from an SD card with a PureOS bootable image:
– Turning off the phone, inserting the card into the tray that also includes the sim card, and turning the phone on again while holding down the volume down button. I have tried every variation of timing with pressing the volume down button that I can think of, but it doesn’t appear to affect the boot: without fail, it proceeds to the disk encryption password of my hard drive as usual, which I assume is past the point of altering the boot order.
– Taking out the SD card and putting it in again.
– Inserting the SD card into a USB-C adapter and plugging that into the USB-C port of the phone. (I have since read that the phone can’t be booted from that port).
–Verifying that the hash of the .iso file used in making the bootable SD card is what the download website says it should be.
–Praying.
I saw FranklyFlawless’ instructions about reflashing the Librem 5 with a new Byzantium image but I run into issues with this at step one: I can’t successfully install uuu. When I attempt it, I get errors saying I have unmet dependencies, and trying to fix those with sudo apt --fix-broken install gets an error in the certificate validation: “Certificate validation failed: The certificate is NOT trusted. The certificate chain uses not yet valid certificate. Could not handshake: error in the certificate verification. [IP: 49.13.57.135 443]”
Any input would be appreciated! I’m out of ideas.
(edited to avoid frying future forum users’ sim cards)
That is the image for an amd computer, you need one from: Image Build [Image Builds] [Jenkins]
Make sure to choose the latest successful build for plain librem5r4 byzantium image (current) or luks librem5r4 byzantium image (current) if available.
To be clear, you understand that you are doing that on another computer (typically a desktop or laptop), not on the phone itself?
If “yes” then what distro and version do you have on your desktop / laptop?
Sounds odd. The certificate works for me, and gives
Validity
Not Before Sat, 24 May 2025 19:54:03 GMT
Not After Fri, 22 Aug 2025 19:54:02 GMT
i.e. comfortably within the validity period - and the CAs up the chain are likewise. You could, I guess, get the error that you got if the time on your computer is wrong. Please check the time.
But you shouldn’t be getting unmet dependencies anyway.
I understand that you may now wish to persevere with booting from SD card now that you have got past the issue of choosing an ISO for the wrong CPU architecture (x86 v ARM).
That will work but you need to unxz the file yourself before doing anything with it.
Thank you very much! I’m now able to boot from the card. Now I have a real noob question: how do I overwrite the hard drive of the phone from this image?
It looks like the phone’s date and time went awry amid my tinkering today, so that could indeed be the cause here, though I’ve been having the issues with updating for many months, seemingly as a result of trying to configure anbox. If I don’t get things working from my SD card I’ll pursue this avenue.
I didn’t do that, but I assume since the file that I burned to my card is bootable that it must have been done under the hood by my disks utility.
Actually, yes, you are right. If you use Gnome Disks to restore a disk image then the disk image can have been compressed (as a .xz file) and Gnome Disks will then automatically behind the scenes decompress the disk image before use.
As such, I should have written: That will work but you need to unxz the file yourself before doing anything with it except restoring it with Gnome Disks.
I could be wrong but I don’t think Gnome Disks can create such a compressed disk image. So this may be an inconsistency in behaviour and leads to …
Also note that disk images created in certain ways may be compressed but the compression was not done with xz in which case I suspect that Gnome Disks won’t recognise or handle automatically the decompression when you restore the disk image.
In the absence of a response from the person who is suggesting that you take this approach … what I would do, once booted from SD card, is get the same (compressed) disk image file onto the SD card and then use Gnome Disks to restore the disk image onto the eMMC drive. That is, use what you know how to do and what works. However dd should be fine too but then see my earlier comment about needing to unxz.
I haven’t tested this though. In fact, I have never booted from SD card. My SD card is not bootable and contains only user data (media). I use Jumpdrive and/or reflash for this kind of thing - which is fine. We are all different.
