Linux Mobile

The PinePhone Pro is PINE64’s flagship smartphone announced on October 15, 2021. It features 4GB of RAM, an 128GB eMMC and is using an Rockchip RK3399S SoC, which is a specialized version of the RK3399 made specifically for the PinePhone Pro.

The guides (Arch Linux ARM & postmarketOS) are based on creating your own image on Arch Linux.

This is required for the following operating systems. Tow-Boot is already installed by default on newer PPPs.

Download the latest release for your PPP - https://github.com/Tow-Boot/Tow-Boot/releases.

Extract it and flash spi.installer.img onto a SD card:

dd if=spi.installer.img of=/dev/XXX bs=1M oflag=direct,sync status=progress

Insert the SD card into your PPP and press and hold the volume down button. Now press the power button until the first vibration occurs, then release the power button but continue to hold the volume down until the second vibration occurs.
You should now see a blue LED and the Tow-Boot start screen should appear.
Install Tow-Boot to SPI Flash.

When everything is done, switch off your device and remove the SD card.

danctnix - https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/Pine64-Arch.

pacman -S dosfstools arch-install-scripts qemu-user-static qemu-user-static-binfmt

systemctl restart systemd-binfmt.service

Check that the ARM architecture exist (aarch64)

ls /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc | grep aarch64

git clone https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/arch-pine64-build.git
cd arch-pine64-build
mkdir /tmp/ppp-cache

./build.sh -a aarch64 -d pinephone-pro -u plasma -h pinephonepro --noconfirm --cachedir /tmp/ppp-cache

[-a ARCHITECTURE] [-d device] [-u ui] [-h hostname] [--osk-sdl] [--noconfirm] [--cachedir directory] [--no-cachedir]

-u ui:

• barebone
• phosh
• plasma
• plasma_desktop
• sxmo

Switch to USB mass storage - press and hold the volume up button and press the power button once. You should now see a blue LED. Connect the device to your PC via USB.

cd arch-pine64-build/build/
dd if=archlinux-pinephone-pro-plasma-*.img of=/dev/XXX bs=1M oflag=direct,sync status=progress

Start the device and follow e.g. our backup guides https://wiki.techsaviours.org/en/backup/server.

Create your own Arch repository to keep older packages in case you need to downgrade your system/phone. It can be more difficult to downgrade than with the x86_64 architecture.
https://git.techsaviours.org/.ORG/local-arch-repo

pacman -S pmbootstrap

mkdir -p ~/build/postmarketOS
pmbootstrap init

Simply follow the questions. Some necessary steps are listed below to use your PPP, the rest is up to you.

Work path [/home/USER/.local/var/pmbootstrap]: ~/build/postmarketOS
Vendor [qemu]: pine64
Device codename: pinephonepro

Switch to USB mass storage - press and hold the volume up button and press the power button once. You should now see a blue LED. Connect the device to your PC via USB.

pmbootstrap install --sdcard=/dev/XXX --fde

--fde is to encrypt your phone.

Once everything is done “umount, unregister binfmt”:

pmbootstrap shutdown