Repairing a broken installation

There are a few options to recover data and attempt to recover the operating system.

Caution

These instructions are relatively technical in nature and should only be performed by someone comfortable with technical instructions.

Back up any files you need from your device. You can do this by booting Jumpdrive on the phone and copying your files to a Linux PC using the steps below:

Back up important files using Jumpdrive

Follow the steps to mount the Librem 5 storage device on another computer.

Try to repair your installation

Open a Terminal in the Librem 5 root

  1. Use lsblk to see where the root and boot partitions are mounted. We mounted root above, GNOME probably mounted boot automatically already. On PureOS/Debian, it’ll be something like /media/<user>/<uuid>

  2. cd to the root partition. If you list with ls you should see bin, dev, boot, etc and other directories.

Mount the boot and system directories needed for chroot

  1. Bind-mount the boot partition. Use the location found above, and don’t forget the . in ./boot.

    sudo mount -o bind /media/<user>/<uuid> ./boot
sudo mount -o bind /dev ./dev
sudo mount -o bind /sys ./sys
sudo mount -o bind /proc ./proc

chroot into the installation

  1. Install these PureOS/Debian packages if you don’t already have them:

    qemu qemu-user-static binfmt-support

  2. chroot into the phone OS while still in the Librem 5 root directory:

    sudo chroot .

Check for common problems

Important

Execute the following commands inside the chroot.

  1. Check if your boot partition is full. This will sometimes cause an update failure:

    df -h /boot

  2. If it has less than 100 MB free space, try to remove dpkg backup initrds:

    rm /boot/initrd*.dpkg-bak

  3. Check again:

    `df -h /boot

  4. If it still has less than 100 MB free space, try to remove any old kernels. This may remove other unreferenced packages if any exist.

    apt autoremove

  5. Try to repair any broken packages:

    apt --fix-broken install

Clean up

  1. Exit the chroot:

    exit

  2. While still working from within the chroot directory, unmount partitions from the chroot:

    sudo umount ./{boot,dev,proc,sys}

  3. Close the terminal tab or window

  4. Unmount the Librem 5 using the eject button in GNOME Files

  5. Unplug the USB-C cable from the Librem 5

  6. Hold the power button on the phone to power off

  7. Try to power on the phone again