Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

A list of frequently encountered questions and problems that we can easily fix. Feel free to add and improve, but make sure it is actually a frequently asked question and not just a pet peeve of your favorite topic or app to keep this list navigatable. Many tipps and customizations are also described in more detail on the tweaks page (there is even one dedicated to the pinetab). Fflat

If you have used the installer and encrypted your disk, you need to enter your password here, in order to decrypt the disk and boot up the phone.

Don't laugh, but have you put the SD card in the correct slot and not the SIM card slot? See the illustration in the pine64 wiki which one is the correct slot. The difference is subtle and you would not be the first one to do that. Also, hardware has been destroyed by putting things into the wrong slot.

The most common reason is that the SD card previously had a distribution or JumpStart flashed to it, and when it was wiped, the boot sector was not wiped. The pinephone is trying to boot from the SD card still and failing.

Please wipe the boot sector on your SD card with the following command:

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/YOURSDCARDDEVICE bs=512 seek=16 count=1

The very upper right corner has a button which will offer you a context menu including poweroff and restart. Some new users are taking days to discover this option, so don't feel embarrassed.

1) Hardware kill switch on? 2) If you boot without battery or with an empty battery, the cell modem and wifi won't work as they are directly attached to the battery, so they will not work, even when you have power plugged in.

This sound is normal and comes from the camera! 4 clicks means:

camera 1: open
camera 2: open
camera 1: close
camera 2: close

The “Menu” key will raise a context menu, as if right-clicking with a mouse. The “Menu” key is on the Squeekboard on-screen keyboard.

Fractal (the Matrix client) uses the Gnome keyring to store and retrieve your Matrix credentials. The storing part works, but currently there is an issue retrieving them when the gnome keyring has not been opened yet after login. A workaround is to either restart the keyring, or open another app that uses it beforehand. For instance, you can open Geary before opening Fractal and things will work.

If you're not that security conscious, you can also set an empty password on the key ring. It will then automatically unlock on login (but your gnome keyring passwords are stored unencrypted on the disk).

This has been fixed in phosh 0.13.0 (available in bookworm).

If you're stuck with an older version, there is always the preinstalled flashlight app, which works just fine.

keepassxc is a great program for handling passwords. Unfortunately its window layout is *not* mobile friendly and the developers have no plans changing this (please do not spam that issue with “but we want it” type of comments). gnome-passwordsafe is an alternative and is available from the repositories.

(Updated)

Mobian has an unstable distro, so you can test some of the later (but less tested) packages.

The easiest way you can switch to this repository is by simply changing the line bullseye to unstable in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mobian.list. This way, you will be getting all your Mobian packages from https://repo.mobian-project.org/unstable main non-free instead of https://repo.mobian-project.org/bullseye main non-free.

There are many apps available on Flatpak, an across distros app source, a few are optimized for mobile most are not. Follow the instructions above to enable unstable in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mobian.list and then if not already installed

sudo apt install flatpak

then add the flatpak repo, if this is not added your searches will come up empty.

flatpak remote-add –if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

You can use the Flatpak website to browse for packages https://flathub.org/home

to install just flatpak install (package name)

to find the name click on a title on the website like this VLC link https://flathub.org/apps/details/org.videolan.VLC cut the name of the package from after details in the URL after the last / org.videolan.VLC

so it looks like this flatpak install org.videolan.VLC

then follow the dialog and VLC or whatever package you want will be installed with dependancies; you can also try to search for example like this flatpak install vlc and you will see a few numbered choices when it searches the flatpak package options.

Some flatpak related commands

• update packages: flatpak update
• remove package: flatpak uninstall (package name)
• remove unused packages (which were installed due to dependencies): flatpak uninstall --unused
• remove data of already uninstalled packages: flatpak uninstall --delete-data

This is not a replacement for native Mobian or even desktop Debian and flatpak apps though some mobile Android apps can be run in a useful way at this point while others will crash every time. The link below includes Mobian install instructions including a link to an Android image with the F-droid app store already installed. https://wiki.mobian-project.org/doku.php?id=anbox Interface issues especially lack of a backspace/triangle/back input will arise as there is not currently any option for android 'soft keys“ i.e. the 'back', 'home', and 'recent apps' triangle, circle, and square provided by either the android touchscreen UI or in hardware at the bottom of an android phone, these inputs can be sent via an attached keyboard.

This is a quite frequent question by newcomers to mobian. The answer is by swiping the app upwards in the phosh window overview. If you have an external monitor connected and a pointing device, windows will start to get a familiar X to click on. This is a design decision made by the upstream phosh maintainers (don't bug them with tons of comments, please).

yes

Mobian comes with a set of preinstalled packages. When performing a apt update && apt upgrade as root (possibly prepended by gnome-session-inhibit to prevent your device from sleeping) these packages will be upgraded to the latest available versions from the mobian and the debian testing repositories. Usually, this is all that you need to do, in order to have a device equivalent to one flashed with the latest weekly image.

But apt upgrade is rather conservative and opts for safe changes only (which is exactly why it is used by default). The manual page states for upgrade: under no circumstances are currently installed packages removed, or packages not already installed retrieved and installed. However, sometimes a package might be replaced obsoleted, conflicts with another package, or new packages are pulled in. In this case “apt” will be “holding back” upgrades and not perform a complete upgrade. If apt tells you it has been holding something back, you need something stronger!

A more more daring, but sometimes necessary approach, is therefore to use apt full-upgrade or apt dist-upgrade, which is described as “the function of upgrade but will remove currently installed packages if this is needed to upgrade the system as a whole”, intelligently handles changing dependencies. (And yes, using apt, it seems both these options are actually equivalent).

Whether this is something that you would be willing to use by default depends on your risk-aversion. You need to perform this in cases where new packages have been brought in, or conflicts with existing packages arise. However, it is recommended to never blindly “dist-upgrade” without inspecting what it would do. I can uninstall your phone, eat your lunch and your dessert too!

In rare cases, reflashing might be needed, but this is not the norm. In some cases, the default set of installed packages changed in the root image but would not be pulled in by mobian-meta packages (one example is gnome-weather) and these would not be auto-installed during upgrades. Another example is that apt usually does not touch or remove configuration files in /etc/. If default configuration options change and your old configuration files continue to hang around, this could cause a different behavior than a fresh install would provide.

It is always safe to perform a

apt --purge autoremove

which will uninstall all automatically installed packages that are not required by other packages. (the purge option will also remove any configuration files of the packages being removed)

On a final note, you might see instructions using apt-get instead of apt. For all practical purposes described here, it does not matter which of these you use. apt is 4 letters less to type and apt-get only knows dist-upgrade not full-upgrade.

It is a known issue when upgrading from the version of Mobian shipped with PinePhone Community Edition. More information on this and other issue on the initial upgrade is in our blog post.

2023-08-21 You can adjust the 'near level' of the infrared proximity sensor; see https://wiki.debian.org/Mobian/Tweaks#Proximity_sensor on the new wiki

2023-08-21 The following notes are likely obsolete but may help in searching for clues. While waiting for further ways of configuring it in the future, you can disable the infrared proximity-sensing by issuing the following commands in a terminal:

sudo su
echo "ambient-enabled=false" >> /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/90_mobian-tweaks-phosh.gschema.override
mv /etc/udev/rules.d/10-proximity.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/10-proximity.rules.backup
exit

OR

If you simply want to disable the proximity sensor altogether its as simple as blacklisting it:

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/proximity.conf

and add this line in

blacklist stk3310

Check out our curated list of mobile-suitable apps. An even longer and similar list of mobile-friendly apps can be found at linmobapps.frama.io.

Finally, you have all the power of Debian underneath! Any available package is just a sudo apt install XYZ away.

Simplest way is by using the dconf editor

sudo apt install dconf-editor

Then in dconf-editor go to ” / sm / puri / phosh“ and edit the “favourites” field. It's a bit tedious using the cursors of the terminal keyboard and copy/paste functions, but doable!

Once done, don't forget to click the ” ^ “ icon on top of the screen, to validate your modifications.

/boot is on its own partition and rather short on space. Generally try to keep only a single working kernel installed (ie uninstall linux-image-5.9-sunxi64 when you are on kernel 5.10). A kernel upgrade could fail with this error message :

update-initramfs: failed for /boot/initrd.img-5.10-sunxi64 with 1.

Then make room on the /boot partition by removing the current initrd (careful after this step, as you will have a not-bootable device):

sudo rm /boot/initrd.img-5.9-sunxi64

At last, upgrade the kernel :

sudo apt install linux-image-sunxi64

Reboot, and remove the old kernel. In a terminal you can type (if 5.9 is your old kernel version):

sudo apt remove --purge linux-image-5.9-sunxi64

Green LED means it is still at p-boot stage.

If a previous kernel installation partially failed, you can try using the previous kernel:

1. With tow-boot: Boot the phone while holding the volume up button at startup and during the second vibration.
2. With JumpDrive on an SD card: Just boot to Jumpdrive

Then edit /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf to prioritize an older kernel, and reboot to try it.

The F2F2 filesystem (Arch wiki) is a filesystem that is supposed to be faster, support encryption and reduce the wear on the flash memory of the disk. Mobian has currently experimental support for it, however, the installer and images created are still using the ext4 file system. In due time we hope to offer F2FS for new installs, do try it in case you are building your own image.

Sorry, no with the default installation. But, the Wake Mobile app has been used with good success for those in need.

Depends. See accessibility. Technical and non-technical help improving accessibility is very welcome.

1. gps via modemmanager (mmcli) only seems to work when a SIM card is inserted in the pinephone (the GPS receiver is part of the modem)?! (trying to enable it will simply return error: modem not enabled yet.
2. Mobian uses the geoclue library to access the location which enables the receiver by default when needed. You can test (and enable) the GPS using the following manual mmcli commands though. sudo mmcli -m any --location-enable-gps-nmea will enable the GPS receiver. sudo mmcli -m any --location-get will show you any location it got (Don't forget to disable the receiver when you have manually enabled it after you are done).
3. Some applications use gpsd to retrieve their locations. gpsd is not installed by default and to make it work, you need to configure gpsd to talk to the GPS modem which means to set DEVICES=”/dev/ttyUSB1“ in your /etc/default/gpsd.
4. More on the technical side of this is on our location page in the wiki.

By default Mobian won't suspend while plugged in, so if your phone consumes more than 500mA while running and your charger only provide 500mA (USB default from long time ago), you'll find your phone discharging instead of charging.

This can be changed from the “settings” menu, in power managment, in the auto-suspend section: set it to auto-suspend when plugged-in.

If the phone is connected to an usb dock and the “Power Supply” app does show a “Current limit” of 500mA or less even though the charger connected to the dock delivers more power then the problem might be that the used charger does not support USB Power Delivery. Many docks seem to expect an USB PD charger.

Yes, no user friendly app for that, but easy enough instructions on this separate page. Please do NOT run some scripts that are out in the wild as root which install additional packages and modify important settings.

Make sure you have activated the mobile network in the “settings” menu after you insert a SIM card. If you have the phone set to 4g only and all outgoing calls fail(and incoming) but SMS works try setting 2g,3g,4g(preferred).

Audio on the Pinephone is routed through hardware through the ADC on the A64 ASoC. The mute button in the telephone “calls” app relies on software mixing, rather than muting the ADC, which does not work. So expect embarassing situations to ensue when you “mute” your microphone during a call. It will still be on!!! (issue 248)

Yes, we know. Fortunately, most phone providers can be configured to forward a second call to a user's mailbox, making this a little more bearable. In much of Europe this could work by dialing **67*OWNPHONENUMBER# (Androids even have a nice GUI for this call forwarding settings). See this wikipedia section and your operators help pages for more on this.

Initiate a telephone call and set speakerphone mode, cancel call. This will usually switch the system back to using the external speaker, this bug has been observed when a headphone was used during a telephone call.

For most people, yes, and you need nothing to configure as this is handled by the modem black box. See the section What's working with Mobian

• The pine64 wiki's modem section is a good starting point.
• Modem managers (mmcli) manual page: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/ModemManager/man/1.0.0/mmcli.8.html
• The Modem's (EG25) AT commands https://wiki.pine64.org/images/2/2e/Quectel_EC25EC21_AT_Commands_Manual_V1.2.pdf
• And generally lots of useful information on the PinePhone's hardware: https://xnux.eu/devices/feature/modem-pp.html

Please do! All you have to do is make an account on our wiki, and you will be able to contribute.

https://gitlab.com/mobian1/wiki/-/wikis/Developer's-Guide

Below are the main steps to get a package accepted but you should read the dev's guide linked above

Some packages are not suitable for Debian or are otherwise targeted to Mobian. In these instances, the software must still be packaged per Debian's guidelines. For the package to be accepted into Mobian, it must be reviewed/acked by one of the following:

One Debian Developer, or

Two Debian Maintainers, or

Four Mobian Maintainers.

The maintainer of the package should also be willing to maintain the package in line with Debian's releases. As Mobian aims to upstream all work into Debian, most packages should target Debian rather than the Mobian repositories.