ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Matthias Apitz <guru@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

El día Tuesday, June 16, 2015 a las 07:23:39PM +0200, Oliver Grawert escribió:

> > If this (non booting device) happens, one may be in highly complicated situation,
> > esp. when you use your BQ for daily busines and as the one and only mobile
> > device. That's why I think, there MUST be a clear and comprehensive
> > description in ONE place which explains exactly and in detail what you
> > now (in the moment of not booting) can do and what you need as tools and
> > files for this. 
> 
> if you ever made your device writable, installed any debs or changed any
> files that are usually in the readonly space there is no guarantee at
> all that any update will ever work and you are pretty much on your
> own ... 

fully agreed; but ...

> the solution is pretty simple, don't tinker with the device if you need
> to rely on it ... the OTAs are binary diffs between two predefined
> readonly images, if you changed the base image of this diff process in
> any way nobody can tell what happens ... 

(could you please explain a bit, how these binary diffs are produced and
loaded into the device later, i.e. how the update works; thanks)

> 
> while you *can* make it writable all documentation that talks about it
> definitely has a big fat warning that you are likely ending up in a
> situation where it will break and you have to re-flash from scratch ...
> 
> beyond this, the askubuntu help under the above url pretty clearly
> describes what you need to do imho ... please feel free to provide your
> own answer there if you think it can be described any better or in more
> detail.

... but: even if you have not tinkerered your device (and I did not),
for some reason you may end up with a not booting device, for example
power fail while updating, broken battery, ...

and for this case one needs a strong guiding about what to do now; I know
there are a lot of places with very(!!!) useful documentation and hints
and I have them pulled together here as an example:


    Installing adb and fastboot:
    http://bernaerts.dyndns.org/linux/74-ubuntu/328-ubuntu-trusty-android-adb-fastboot-qtadb

    Installation and flashing:
    http://sturmflut.github.io/ubuntu/touch/2015/05/07/hacking-ubuntu-touch-index/ :
    -- Hacking the bq, Part 1: Bootloader, Fastboot and Recovery
    -- Hacking the bq, Part 2: Factory Mode
    -- Hacking Ubuntu Touch, Part 1: ubuntu-device-flash
    -- Hacking Ubuntu Touch, Part 2: Devices and Images
    -- Hacking Ubuntu Touch, Part 3: How images are flashed
    -- Hacking Ubuntu Touch, Part 4: Developer mode and ADB
    -- Hacking Ubuntu Touch, Part 5: adb shell vs. phablet-shell
    -- Hacking Ubuntu Touch, Part 6: Logfiles
    -- Hacking the bq, Part 3: Supported media plugins and codecs
    -- Hacking Ubuntu Touch, Part 7: System and process monitoring tools (part 1)

    Flashing the E4.5:
    http://askubuntu.com/questions/602035/how-do-i-use-ubuntu-device-flash-with-the-bq-aquaris-e4-5-and-aquaris-e5

but all this amount of very good stuff, is not what you need in a case
of emergency; in this case you need a clear step by step guide 1....nn
which must start with how to enable adb and adb-fastboot (keep in mind
not all of us are Ubuntu-users or Ubuntu-experts, but users of Linux or
in my case FreeBSD;

> this is why we use askubuntu, you are able to improve what's there if
> you feel the need ;)

I'm in the good position to have a second broken BQ E4.5 which I must return in
the next week to BQ.com for repair/change; I will try to test a
procedure with this flashing it to factory state again before returning
the device to BQ.

	matthias

-- 
Matthias Apitz, guru@xxxxxxxxxxx, http://www.unixarea.de/ +49-170-4527211    +49-176-38902045
"Wenn der Mensch von den Umständen gebildet wird, so muß man die Umstände menschlich bilden."
"Si el hombre es formado por las circunstancias entonces es necesario formar humanamente
las circunstancias", Karl Marx in Die heilige Familie / La sagrada familia (MEW 2, 138)