Installation

In this page you will find detailed instructions about flashing Plasma Mobile to your mobile phone.

Tip

Before proceeding, please ensure that you have installed adb and fastboot on you workstation

If you flash Plasma Mobile for the first time, you likely need to follow steps 1A and 1B. After successfully done those steps, you can always jump straight to step 2 for future flashing.

1A. Unlock the bootloader

In xda forum you will find instructions to unlock the bootloader of the Nexus 5X. Skip this step if you phone is already unlocked.

1B. Format cache and userdata

Attention

This will complete erase the memory of your Nexus 5X device. Please ensure you have a backup of all your data before you proceed.

Put your Nexus 5X in fastboot mode (press volume down + power button at once), then open a terminal and run:

fastboot format cache
fastboot format userdata

2. Flash Plasma Mobile

While your phone is still in fastboot mode, start flashing it by cloning the pm-flashtool repository and executing the pm-flash script:

git clone https://github.com/plasma-phone-packaging/pm-flashtool.git
cd pm-flashtool
./pm-flash

If you have already executed the pm-flash script in the past and you would like to avoid to download all the files again, the -c parameter of script can be used to re-use the cache instead.

You may also try the -p parameter. The -p (platform) parameter currently accepts neon, arch and edge. Edge rootfs is the latest development snapshot of Plasma Mobile and the platform recommended for testing new features and bug fixes.

Tip

Before reporting bugs, we recommend testing with the edge image to see if the issues still occur with the latest code.

The pm-flash script will download the files required and will store them in the cache subdir. For example:

  • pm-rootfs-20180124-113114.tar.gz (Plasma Mobile rootfs)

  • recovery.img (TWRP recovery img)

  • system.img (Halium image containing the hardware adaption for each device)

  • boot.img (Halium initrd)

Then the TWRP Recovery img is used as a tool to flash all other components to the target device.

Attention

The above could take quite some time (15-20 minutes) and requires you to enter your password to continue.

Depending on the Android version installed before flashing, your device may hang on the “Google” logo after your first boot. If this occurs, you must enter fastboot mode again (power + volume down) and from your pm-flashtool directory run:

./flash-vendor

Your phone should be able to reboot into Plasma Mobile now and login can occur as normal.

Useful tips

If flashing has completed successfully, you can reboot your phone and you should automatically login to a working session. The username of the logged-in user is phablet and the password is ‘1234’.

Now you will probably need some tips that will make your life a little bit easier.

Copy a file to the phone via USB

To copy a file from your host-system to the phone, execute:

scp /path/to/file phablet@10.15.19.82:/home/phablet

Remote connection via USB

If your phone is connected via usb and running Plasma Mobile, it can be remotely controlled from the attached computer via the command line using ssh:

ssh phablet@10.15.19.82

Connect via WiFi

To easily establish a wifi connection, execute:

nmcli dev wifi con "ssid" password "password"

Resize root partition

To resize the root partition on the phone, first reboot to recovery and then from adb shell, run the following:

e2fsck -yf /data/rootfs.img
resize2fs -f /data/rootfs.img 1024000

This will double the size of the rootfs.

Backup and restore

While working on Plasma Mobile, you may need a full backup of your system. To make a full root file system backup:

  • Enter recovery mode: press volume down + power button to enter fast boot mode, then select recovery mode.

  • To make a backup copy, execute:

adb pull /data/rootfs.img

  • When you need to restore, execute:

adb push my-backup-image.img /data/

where my-backup-image.img is the local backup copy of your root file system.

Attention

By following this process you make a backup copy of the Plasma Mobile rootfs, and not a full backup of the partitions of your device.