I just got this phone and I’m a complete noob. Phone wont work now, I enter the first password then I sometimes see the Ctrl+C to cancel all filesyste error then other times it says successful after the first password then nothing else happens. I don’t have linux laptop. Do I just return this?
Sorry I am extremely new to this. The L5 and linux in general. I just want some help how to reflash this.
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Did you buy the phone new from Purism or from elsewhere?
Has this phone ever booted successfully since you got the phone?
If the phone has booted successfully, what, if anything, have you done on the phone since getting it? e.g. installed software? applied updates? made configuration changes?
This would generally be a negative but if you have a desktop / laptop at all then you can
a) download a PureOS (or Ubuntu or similar) .iso
b) create a bootable USB flash drive
c) boot your desktop / laptop from the USB flash drive
So then you do have a Linux desktop / laptop, which you could use to e.g. reflash the phone.
Hence please clarify what resources you have available.
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The thread for that is here:
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I bought from purism. few weeks ago. ordered the hub as well but its on back order. I bought this phone because I thought it would be a huge incentive for me to learn Linux. I am an utter noob at all of this. so the story is, the phone worked perfectly for since i turned it on and followed instructions. I really wanted to use the signal app and mulvad VPN as well. I didn’t do my researches carefully. I tried to install anbox first. didn’t work then I tried waydroid which I think would’ve worked. I followed the instructions and after one reboot the phone gets stuck after the first passphrase. says booted successfully then nothing happens. sometimes i get a msg saying type cntrl +c or something if i have the kill switches all upwards but if i have them all downwards then i don’t get that msg, instead i can press the volume down button then something runs for a second then afterwards nothing else. I haven’t been sleeping. Im trying to find a way to reflash and save this without returning for refund. so far the easiest way for me would be the livecd or liveusb option? I don’t have Linux laptop or anything. just a dell desktop with windows that i play my blizzard games on. please help this noob. thank you in advance
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I have read all that, like i said I haven’t been sleeping. I current don’t have a hub nor any linux devices to connect the l5 to
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Then for the moment put the phone aside and work on your desktop. You will have to solve that problem first. You will need to follow the outline steps above.
For random yucky Windows computers, I would honestly recommend that you make a bootable Ubuntu USB flash drive. Create a bootable USB stick with Rufus on Windows | Ubuntu
Then once you can boot Linux on your desktop, the official reflash procedure is here: Reflashing the Phone
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yea that too I’ve read. someone also mentioned that if I can get a hub and connect a physical keyboard to type what the error msg says? also I have a very old chromebook.
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my next item to order is a linux laptop. system76 or the purism on cube which i was also interested to learn. I just want this l5 to work again for now. I’ll try to do the bootable ubuntu usb flash drive. thank you so much. i’ll report back. maybe after some sleep.
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(just an anecdote) I hope you weren’t brought here by someone called Retera. I suppose the name means nothing to you…
The advice from @irvinewade is probably the way to go. I have messed my Librem 5 up worse than yours based on your description – and was still able to bring it back – so I’m sure yours will come back if you flash it with the reflashing guide.
Then we could think about waydroid. What I’ve been doing on my phone is to have a bootable SD card. I made it by looking at that flash script, finding the img file it would download, using a command to write the same image to an SD card, and then using that card as a dual boot on the librem5. Then, inside my dual boot, I installed waydroid. It lets me use waydroid if I want to be lame like that, but also have an escape route (booting the main hard drive) if I don’t want Google stalking me.
Sounds like you want to do the reflash and get it working, and get that peace of mind knowing your device will work. And from there, there are tons of options.
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Might the problem merely be the old bug where the screen won’t light up on boot? Happens to me all the time.
If I get no screen after the green-orange LED on start – wait about 6 seconds – then hold the power button down long enough to kill it (you will get no feedback) and try again. Sometimes the L5 will light the screen on the first try, but I often have to try four times.
Yes, it is annoying… but a small price to pay for a phone that doesn’t own me. Of course, I hope this eventually is fixed.
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Before or after the prompt for the disk encryption passphrase?
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Is your L5 from the evergreen batch or something earlier? I don’t recall having this problem that you are describing. But maybe I overlooked something.
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(disregard - mistake on my part)
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Before!
…
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Evergreen. I have looked lately, but I’m almost certain this was discussed at length here… maybe a year ago?
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Now that I’m fully awake after searching through this forum for about 48 hours and 10 hours of sleep, I’m ready for this. Thank you guys for helping a noob out. I’ll go on with what irvinewade advised regarding the usb rufus method. But before that I wanted to let you guys know exactly what’s happening with my L5 ATM. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to record it and show you guys in video in this forum. Lmk if I’m allowed to. I’m too new here. Another thing I thought about was removing my chromeos from the Samsung chrome book I got for free and install Ubuntu on it. Maybe a better idea than the USB method since I want to get started on learning Linux? Before buying a legit Linux laptop. I’ve been googling and there is a third party script called crouton to install Ubuntu using chroot, . If that’s not possible then I can create the Rufus USB on my windows desktop and might be able to use it on Chromebook on developers mode apparantly? If Chromebook is useless then I’ll just have to use windows desktop. The problem is, the tower doesn’t have the usbc port for L5 wire. I have the converter that I can use which I plug L5 cable into and plug into tower regular usb. Which works, it charges the phone. But for the Chromebook I don’t need to use the converter. The L5 usbc cable fits in and charges the phone but I’m not sure if either the tower or Chromebook will support the usbc pd? My Samsung curved monitor has usbc pd but that won’t help. For now I need to buy the usb hub because I have none. And since purism hub is on backorder. I think I’ll need to buy a hub as well. Which one you guys recommend? On the site purism list has the startech 4 to 4 usb 3.0 peripheral sharing switch. Any of you guys tried that ?
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I also need to buy a flash drive. Be back later.
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You can convert your (short) video to a GIF, or several GIFs, and post, but you may have to dial the quality way down to get under the size limit.
Photos can be posted also.
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I haven’t tried the purism hub but I got a free hub with a PinePhone a couple years ago and it worked great with the Librem 5. When I wanted more power throughput to see if I could keep the Librem 5 running in docked mode while its battery was removed, and thus see if I could basically use the L5 as a batteryless desktop when at home, I bought the most expensive dock I on the shelf at the store down the street. I think it may have been about $150, but it is from the j5create brand and has every type of port under the sun.
Seems like both the cheap pine dock and the j5create doc from the store down the way both worked great regarding connectivity. To just get you going, I would imagine almost any dock will do. Sometimes if I use DisplayPort on a 4k monitor, the Librem 5 will try to output at 4k and cause it to show no output and I have to go into Phosh/Gnome settings and set resolution to a lower nice value, such as 720p or 1080p. But other than that, things in general seemed to work. Sometimes when unplugging from the doc the Librem 5 will shutdown suddenly without asking, and in a few cases for me docking and then toggling the hardware switches seemed to increase the odds of hardware switches getting stuck off and networking not operating as expected. But other than that, they were all working great for me.
So, I would imagine any dock you want to try will work.
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