Some time happen from Purism FOSS Line Programmer.
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The lack of firmware may be an issue if the original owner upgraded the WiFI/BT card from redpine to SparkLAN.
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About the SPARKLAN and required firmware: New Post: Shipping new SparkLAN Wifi cards with Librem 5
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That is the firmware for the previous make of WiFi card. So this will have zero chance of working.
If you really have the Sparklan card then it would be helpful to know whether the previous owner upgraded and whether it ever worked. (If it was bought with the Sparklan card then it should just work. Otherwise if it’s an older phone that the previous owner upgraded then there is a certain amount of work to get the firmware sorted out.)
It is possible that Purism Support would be able to tell you, given appropriate information, what the phone was originally sold with (hence whether it has been homebrew upgraded).
I have a USB ethernet dongle. Plug it in the bottom of the phone, works out-of-the-box. So that may be an option for you if you want to pursue other random software fixes before getting the WiFi sorted out. Many docks will also have an ethernet port built-in, and that would be an alternative to a dongle.
Also though … if for no other reason than security … it is imperative to reflash a phone (reset any phone) that you just bought on the internet (as is already noted above multiple times 
).
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Well, that’s disappointing, to say the least. Does anyone perhaps know where I can find the appropriate SparkLAN firmware? Is it included in the current flash? I haven’t had time to mess with it, because I really am a farmer, and I switched back to my Light Phone II because it has more functionality and is less buggy, and if any of you have used a Light Phone II, you must know how absurd that is.
I just wanted a phone I could access the internet with other than at lunchtime and in the evenings when I’m back at the house. I appreciate everyone’s help, but I can see why the previous owner sold this one; I imagine a hacker would have sold me one that worked flawlessly.
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As L5s have been shipping with the SparkLAN card for some time now, and therefore with the required firmware installed, I imagine that the current builds posted for flashing contain all you need.
In my comment #8 to you, I linked a thread in which @dos (Purism developer) said that the presence of the firmware (or not) can be checked in the L5’s file system:
If, after you have reflashed the OS on the L5, you find firmware files in /usr/share/firmware-librem5-nonfree/firmware/brcm, then you’re good to go. If not, then you’ll need to download and install it.
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Use these instructions to flash the firmware jail, which should enable functionality on the SparkLAN module:
Sorry, it isn’t that simple. This is because all builds of PureOS aim to exclude any blackbox firmware.
So the procedure really does depend on the history of the phone.
If it started life with the older make WiFi card then, as @FranklyFlawless says, it will be necessary to
- create the firmware jail, and then
- put the correct firmware in it (i.e. the firmware for the SparkLAN card).
If it started life with the SparkLAN card then Purism would have shipped the phone with both of those two bullet points taken care of - and something else may be going wrong.
Any vaguely recent build though, regardless of WiFi card, will know how to mount the firmware jail and load the firmware from the jail into the card - when that is necessary (and it is only necessary at the current time for the SparkLAN card).
Ha ha. Yes, if one of your government agencies is after you, you are probably correct.
But, as I did write, security is not the only reason to need to start from a clean slate when you buy a random phone off the internet from a random stranger.
Said stranger may have been a tinkerer. All manner of settings might be in unusual states. All manner of optional software may have been installed. You need to start from a known state. If I worked in Purism Support (NB: I don’t) then the first thing I would ask you to do is to reflash.
In order to reflash you don’t need working WiFi on the phone (or indeed any internet at all on the phone). You do however need a desktop / laptop (or at a stretch other options) that is running Linux and which does have a working internet connection.
It probably wouldn’t do any harm to ask the seller about the history of the phone and its WiFi card. I understand that the seller may choose not to respond / is under no obligation to respond / may no longer exist / etc.
What country are you in?
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False Jail it is an OpenSource THING which makes sense if this FOSS-BLOB-Firmware is hosted in /lib/firmware directly, so an opensource user here could recommend a simple Command that would solve the whole problem without going to an useless False Jail. However there are True Jail but this is not the case right now.
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I’m in the United States, and I think government agencies are after everyone (not just little old me). The seller was a reseller, who didn’t know anything about these phones.
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In that case you could send it in to Purism for repair and get it sorted out properly.
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Might do that if it isn’t working after this; did the flash, followed the steps, solid red light, now I wait…
will it turn itself on? Am I supposed to turn it on after the the light is solid red? The steps are not entirely clear on this point.
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After reflashing Byzantium, the script should indicate success, the Librem 5 should turn solid green, then show the LUKS prompt. The default passphrase is 123456.
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You may need to post some of the terminal output from the host computer (redacting anything that is sensitive). That way we can see whether the flash did succeed.
Provided that the flash finished, whether it succeeded or failed, it should be OK to reboot the phone. (And if it didn’t work, you can safely have as many attempts as you need.)
The question is though: Were you previously using the encrypted file system (requires a passphrase to be entered at boot before the login PIN) or the unencrypted (plain) file system? And which did you choose to reflash to?
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Okay, I would like some clarification on flashing steps please.
When the “./scripts/librem5-flash-image --stable” step is complete, how should I turn the phone off so that I might turn it back on while holding the volume up button? Previously, I turned the phone off via the drop down menu at the top, and then turned it on via the method described, but I found the phone would not turn on while I was holding the volume up button.
If I am unsuccessful after loading, and nothing is different when I turn it back on, do I have to download and flash everything all over again? It doesn’t seem to have took.
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Usually I turn off my Librem 5 USA using the drop down menu, but you can also force shut it off by holding the power button for over 5 seconds. If you are unable to enter flashing mode using the first method, follow the detailed instructions for the second method instead.
You don’t want to hold either volume up or volume down to reboot the phone after a flash.
The instructions say, for the procedure after a successful flash: Remove the USB C cable and hold down the power button for 15-18 seconds to reset the phone.
Yes and no. If you follow the default procedure then yes. If it looks as if you are going to have to do this a few too many times 
and if your internet is slow then there are additional optional flags to the flashing script to expedite the process i.e. only download once.
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Yeah, because it absolutely will not turn on if you’re holding volume up as the instructions indicate.
Each time I do the step “./scripts/librem5-flash-image --stable”, it insists on downloading it all over again, over 4G, which did gobble up my remaining data, but I was going to upgrade that anyways. It is, however, very slow; why does it not search for a temp file? I’m now downloading it again for the third time because of the volume up command. These instructions are confusing and incomplete IMHO. How exactly do I enter flashing mode after the download step (./scripts/librem5-flash-image --stable) is complete?
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Either of these two methods.
Just to confirm, you’re performing these commands on your Linux computer, right?
See if these more detailed, but simplified instructions help: Time to flash is now - but how? - #16 by amarok
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