Update U-Boot on the PinePhone

Tutorial

This tutorial provides instructions for updating the PinePhone’s bootloader from Manjaro running off of a microSD card. This tutorial presumes you are comfortable using the command-line on Linux and the default Terminal app.

Steps

First, ensure the system is up-to-date.

$ sudo pacman -Syuu
:: Synchronizing package databases...
  core is up to date
  extra is up to date
  community is up to date
:: Starting full system upgrade...
 there is nothing to do

Next, determine which device is the onboard eMMC module.

$ lsblk
NAME         MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
loop0          7:0    0 275.7M  1 loop /var/lib/anbox/rootfs
mmcblk0      179:0    0 238.5G  0 disk (1)
├─mmcblk0p1  179:1    0 213.6M  0 part /boot
└─mmcblk0p2  179:2    0 238.3G  0 part /
mmcblk2      179:32   0  14.7G  0 disk  (2)
├─mmcblk2p1  179:33   0   1.9M  0 part
├─mmcblk2p2  179:34   0     1M  0 part
├─mmcblk2p3  179:35   0     8M  0 part
├─mmcblk2p4  179:36   0    64M  0 part
├─mmcblk2p5  179:37   0  64.3M  0 part
├─mmcblk2p6  179:38   0  63.9M  0 part
├─mmcblk2p7  179:39   0  63.9M  0 part
├─mmcblk2p8  179:40   0   2.4G  0 part
├─mmcblk2p9  179:41   0   2.4G  0 part
└─mmcblk2p10 179:42   0   8.6G  0 part
mmcblk2boot0 179:64   0     4M  1 disk
mmcblk2boot1 179:96   0     4M  1 disk

1	`mmcblk0` is the 250 GB SD card running Manjaro.
2	`mmcblk2` is the internal 16 GB eMMC module.

Flashing to the wrong device could destroy your data.

Flash the bin file to the eMMC.^[1]

$ sudo dd if=/boot/u-boot-sunxi-with-spl-pinephone.bin of=/dev/mmcblk2 bs=8k seek=1
88+1 records in
88+1 records out
725712 bytes (726 kB, 709 KiB) copied, 0.0612089 s, 11.9 MB/s

Conclusion

That’s all. You should now have the latest U-Boot booting your PinePhone!