Installation: Difference between revisions
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Additionally, *MAKE SURE TO BACKUP YOUR PHONE BEFORE INSTALLING POSTMARKETOS*. Please follow [[Backing up a non-pmOS phone|this guide]], as it will show you how to backup your phone. Do NOT skip this step. | |||
=== Your device === | === Your device === |
Revision as of 02:07, 17 December 2023
This article describes how to get postmarketOS installed onto your device.
Introduction
What to expect
In its current stage, postmarketOS is for Linux enthusiasts. The experience will not be as polished as running Android or iOS. Expect serious bugs like calls not working, SMS not arriving, alarm clock not working etc. Do not use this on your main phone if you rely on its functionallity. You have been warned.
Also in this stage, we expect that you know how to use a Linux terminal. Throughout this wiki you will find a couple of commands prefixed with $
(or #
for root). You should not enter that character, it is merely to designate that the following commands are intended to be input/executed within a terminal. For example, the following command to list contents of the current working directory, ls
, will be mentioned as:
$ ls
Additionally, *MAKE SURE TO BACKUP YOUR PHONE BEFORE INSTALLING POSTMARKETOS*. Please follow this guide, as it will show you how to backup your phone. Do NOT skip this step.
Your device
First of all, open the devices page in a new tab and find your device. Take notice of the category it is in (main, community or testing). Read the available features on the device page (so you don't have wrong expectations). The installation instructions vary greatly depending on your device, so make sure to read the device specific installation instructions.
Build your own image?
To install postmarketOS, you have two options:
- Use a pre-built image if your device is in the main or community categories. Read on below.
- Build your own image with pmbootstrap if you want to encrypt your installation, or your device is in the testing category, or if you would like to have more choices available (e.g. picking an exotic user interface). Read the pmbootstrap article.
Using a pre-built image
Releases before v23.12 had installer images for some devices. We plan to bring them back with ondev2. |
Download
Open the download page and click on your device. You will be presented with directories named after user interfaces. Choose one of them. Then click on the directory with the latest image date. Now you can download the image files.
Download the following files, each of them is described further below:
- rootfs
- boot (if available)
- bootpart (if available)
rootfs
All devices have a rootfs image. It ends in the device name and .img.xz
, for example -pine64-pinephone.img.xz
.
The rootfs image is not encrypted. If you would like to encrypt your phone, you can build your own encrypted image with pmbootstrap instead of following this guide.
The rootfs image has the default login of user
and password 147147
.
boot
Androids need a boot.img file. It ends in -boot.img.xz
.
Download it, if it is available.
bootpart
For some devices like the ASUS MeMO Pad 7, the root and boot partition are in separate files instead of being combined in the rootfs image (pmbootstrap!1871). The file containing the boot partition ends in -bootpart.img.xz
.
Download it, if it is available.
Flashing
SD card
Devices like the PinePhone, Samsung Galaxy S II, Nokia N900, various laptops etc. boot from an SD card, USB stick or other external storage. Find the name with lsblk
first and make sure it is the right one as you will overwrite everything on it. Use a path without partition number at the end, such as /dev/mmcblk0
.
Then write the image to it:
$ xz --decompress --stdout path-to-rootfs.img.xz | sudo dd of=/dev/mmcblk... bs=4M status=progress
If you are on Windows, see here.
Wait until the command completes and eject the SD card. If your device is able to boot from SD card without flashing anything to internal storage (such as the PinePhone), you should now be able to insert it into your device and boot it up. You are done with installing postmarketOS, congratulations!
Flash tools like Fastboot, Heimdall etc.
Other devices, such as Androids and the Librem 5 need to run a flashing tool to send the image files to the device while it is in a special flashing mode. Beware that this will overwrite the existing installation/data on your phone! The device page should give the detailed instructions. Usually it involves extracting the images (as these tools can't use the xz
compressed files), with the unxz
command. Afterwards one runs the flash tool with it, e.g. fastboot flash …
.
If the instructions are missing, look at your device's deviceinfo file or ask in the chat for help. Then add the missing instructions for the next person.
When you are done with flashing the files, reboot the device. You are done with installing postmarketOS, congratulations!