Any help with installing Gentoo to a Pinephone Pro?

kebabslob · n00b Joined: 24 Dec 2021 Posts: 7

Hello Gentoo,

I want to install to a Pinephone Pro that I got, but I am not sure exactly what the best place to start on that would be. I have seen https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/PinePhone, but it details processes different than what the Pro would need. For instance, I think the Pro requires a different boot loader. The Pro also has a different way of booting, such that I should need to hold a reset button inside of it, I believe.

I have also seen a post external to Gentoo's planet, here: https://stealthgun.tweakblogs.net/blog/19830/gentoo-on-a-pinephone-pro. I want to follow that guide, but it seems to be a bit outdated, and I also do not want to use Gnome, but rather maybe KDE.

Thanks,
Kebab

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2022 2:19 pm Post subject:

kebabslob,

Make it work first, make it better later.

The idea behind booting Gentoo from an SD card, not the eMMC, is that its safe.
The worst that can happen, is you need to rewrile the SD card.

When you change the boot loader on the eMMC and mess up, your phone may be bricked until you fix it using a serial port.
Make Gentoo boot to the command line, from the SD card, then think about next steps.
That much is common to whatever comes next anyway.

Look at cross compiling and installing binaries.
eMMC is just a soldered down SD card, so avoid building there if you can.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2022 2:20 pm Post subject:

Moved from Installing Gentoo to Gentoo on ARM.

Its going to be an arm64 install.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

kebabslob · n00b Joined: 24 Dec 2021 Posts: 7

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2022 7:18 pm Post subject:

kebabslob,

It's a Pinephone, as its open, you can recover it if you have to.
You will learn things you can learn no other way. :)
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

szatox · Advocate Joined: 27 Aug 2013 Posts: 3498

Baby steps:
Pinephones prioritize booting from SD card over eMMC, so you should not be able to brick it in software. Download any system image for your device and see if it boots to confirm your hardware is working.
Then you can inspect the device - preferably using SSH or any USB-C dock you have around and even repair or replace the builtin system.