Pine fun - Darling I bricked my internal storage

June 24 2022 by Sebastian Sumpf

I somehow managed to brick my Manjaro distribution running on internal storage (eMMC) on my PinePhone. So, how do I re-install or install Genode in the future?

Turns out to be very easy:

• Download SD card image of your choice

   wget https://github.com/manjaro-pinephone/phosh/releases/download/beta24/Manjaro-ARM-phosh-pinephone-beta24.img.xz
  

• Download JumpDrive. JumpDrive is a small Linux setup that will export internal storage (eMMC) and external storage (SD card) as USB gadget mass storage devices

   wget https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/Jumpdrive/releases/download/0.8/pine64-pinephone.img.xz
  

• Flash JumpDrive on a SD card. Example

   unxz -c pine64-pinephone.img.xz | dd of=/dev/<sd-card-device> bs=1M conv=fsync
  

  (<sd-card-device>: We use a SD card to USB converter and pass it to our VirtualBox guest. For instructions on how to to do this please refer to the Sculpt documentation).

• Connect the PinePhone's USB-C port to your machine

• Insert SD card into PinePhone and boot from it. You should see the JumpDrive boot logo

• The Sculpt report/log should say something like this

  usb 1-4: new high-speed USB device number 8 using xhci_hed
  usb 1-4: New USB device found, idVendor=1209, idProduct=4201
  usb 1-4: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
  usb 1-4: Product: PinePhone
  usb 1-4: Manufacturer: Pine64
  usb 1-4: SerialNumber: Jumpdrive
  

• Pass usb 1-4 to VirtualBox

• Load the g_mass_storage.ko kernel module within your guest Linux

   modprobe g_mass_storage
  

• The log message output should show

• Pinephone's internal storage is 32GB so

   unxz -c Manjaro-ARM-phosh-pinephone-beta24.img.xz | dd of=/dev/sdb bs=1M conv=fsync
  

  does the trick.

• Reboot and have fun!