I stopped using the librem 5 for a long time because the phone didn’t really work for anything at that point. I came back to see how it was. I flashed it and my SD card reader doesn’t work anymore. My SD card does after plugging into another machine. Anyone got any recommendations? I bought this evergreen L5 from an individual not used condition instead of from purism so can I even do anything about this? Others have reported similar issues on the forum. This looks like a manufacturing defect.
Tested by connecting over USB C port and it works like this but this method is stupid. Can anyone link to some documentation for what I am meant to do?
Reviving this thread because I’ve considered making my own several times, but always decide to wait “just a little bit longer.”
I’ve been going back and forth with support for over four months on this. My SD card reader has been dead since I got the phone, but there’s always one more dmesg log they need, or one more update they want me to try, one more output of lsblk they want, with response times ranging from a day to a month and averaging around a week.
AFAICT this is a hardware issue with no fix available, because the card reader flat out doesn’t detect known working SD cards, and as you pointed out, USB-C card readers will read and allow you to mount the same cards just fine. It’s unlikely to be a software issue because it’s been reported on multiple devices on multiple kernel versions. I’ve checked the physical slot on my phone and confirmed it’s not damaged, but haven’t had time to dig into it further if it’s even possible to do with schematics alone. I would be more inclined to look into it further if the device were out of warranty, but since this has been an issue from day 1 that I’ve had the device, it should be someone at Purism poking around the phone trying to figure out what went wrong after I’ve been given a replacement under warranty.
When I initially opened my support ticket, they told me not to put any foreign objects into the SD card slot (at the time the only suggested fixes were things like a drop of shellac in the card tray). I just tried using a card with a piece of shipping tape on the back of it, but the card still wasn’t recognized.
From looking at the slot, the contacts stick out a substantial amount, so I don’t think the issue is electrical contact. Some of the earliest reports got responses suggesting that it was user error from inserting/removing the tray while the phone was powered on, but this issue has been reported by people who are conscientious about turning the phone completely off before doing anything with the tray as well, so it doesn’t seem to be that either.