Bootloop after Marshmallow Update

Yeah cache wiping did nothing.

Are you saying that you did a “restore to factory settings”, the update finished correctly and now you have a functioning phone with marshmallow?

I guess I’ll have to do it too :sweat:

yes. and keeping it cool during opimization does nothing when the runtimes are incompatible.
Even if you keep it in the fridge, the optimizer can’t handle it.

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Cooling the Phone doesn’t appear to do anything, so I wanted to try the other option (the recovery mode). But really have no clue what to do after opening the recovery mode. It looks as though I need to be a lot more interested and experienced with computers and software than I actually am (or would like to be).
Am I right, or just overlooking something simple?

Check 1), then 2) and then 3)

  1. Dictionary Entry: Recovery Mode
  2. https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/201654943
  3. https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/207914363-Manually-install-Fairphone-OS-for-the-Fairphone-2

That should bring you up to date.

That’s also what we have observed so far - it seems to be a common problem to phones shipped with the Google Mobile Services.
We did not find another root cause, but please report anything else.

Unfortunately, this is not recoverable - and you will have to wipe the data.

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@borjan / @ChuckMorris
Do you happen to know if reactivating the deactivated Google apps (and updating them to current version) before starting the Marshmallow update will help?

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So I did a factory reset and as expected, it works (the bootloop ends - now it’s the day after Groundhog Day :D)
But before the reset i saved my picture data via adb pull /storage/emulated/0/DCIM/, cause (shame on me) my last update is from Dec.2016…

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That should avoid the optimisation boot-loop completely.

In any case, I would recommend to regularly perform back-ups, and always do so before updating any device (be it computer or phone).

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Hi

I tried the system recovery, but it sais “couldn’t mount sd card”. I really want to avoid a factory reset, since I haven’t backed up my data for a long time. What would you recommend?

Thank you!

I think I squelched (deactivated) youtube app shortly before the update. Shouldn’t affect this i think?

Well you wouldn’t think that deactivating any other GAPP should affect the OS update either, but it clearly does. So I’d assume it’s all GAPPS that should be reactivated before updating.

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Fairphone should tell this every owner before releasing the update. Maybe the updater could show a warning?
I followed this thread and can reactivate all apps before the FP update (before every upcoming update?). But not every FP owner will read this.

@schmulschubiak Hey, thanks for the info. I’ve “invested” most of the day yesterday trying exactly the same. I managed to sideload the firmware update file via adb, and dammingly enough I even saw the filestructure on windows. Sadly after that my pc won’t recognize my phone and adb won’t allow me to do anything, even though I see the device being connected. I get the whole “error:closed” issue. I even got to recognize the phone on a Ubuntu VM (dmesg and lsusb show me the device) but it won’t mount or, at least, I can’t find the device on the fs or in gparted.

Could you tell me how did you proceeed? (I.e. which steps you took?)

  • Connect the phone to a pc with xy OS (does your OS recognize the phone? I suppose you couldn’t directly access the files)
  • Turn on the phone (was the phone on bootloop or in recovery mode?)
  • If the phone was in recovery mode, did you need to select the “update via adb” option?
  • Did you get any of the “error:closed” or similar errors?
  • Did you do it via adb command line tool? or via adb IDE?

Sorry for the millions of questions, but I feel like I am so close to be able to salvage some stuff. Luckily it is only 2 weeks worth of stuff, but still it would suck super much to lose it.

@Shwaetsbaesi Hey, I had the same problem. I ended up downloading the platform-tools (version r25.0.3) from android studio website and, with cygwin, called ./adb.exe sideload FP2_XXXX_OTA.zip (the sw update). You might have to call start-server and/or devices and/or usb to get it to work. Check https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/207914363-Manually-install-Fairphone-OS-for-the-Fairphone-221 for some info.

@FeuRenard It actually does, it tells you to backup your stuff. The thing for me was that, until this time, everything went without a hitch so I didn’t think of doing a backup right before updating

Cheers,
Suckelo

The release of this update was a mistake as Rick explains here:

I’m sure for the official update FP will think of a way to warn everybody to reenable GAPPS before updating.

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You actually describe the issue very well. Why shouldn’t other Fairphone users act like you? There is always the instruction to have backups before updating. If there was no problem yet, they probably won’t care about the backup this time, too.
It seems to be totally preventable that users have to rely on their backups (which maybe don’t exist) after the upgrade due to disabled GAPPS. So this should be prevented.

I hope they do. Maybe the updater app could do this automatically. No user will be surprised that deactivated apps reappear after an upgrade (not update).

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But before the reset i saved my picture data via adb pull /storage/emulated/0/DCIM/

I was slowly finding my way with adb to recover my pictures ; your post saved me some time. Thanks!

What would be the path to pull the contacts data?

You’re right of course, in this case it’s an upgrade. But the problem will persist with following updates. FP is currently working on a way for the updater app to detect any sort of system or GAPPS modifications and refuse to update/grade then.

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Thank you for this answer!

This sounds like in the future (with Android 6) it won’t be practical to deactivate Google apps. It would be annoying to activate them before every update and deactivate them after the update. This means that you can no longer argue that preinstalled Google apps aren’t bad because you can deactivate them. It will be a pain with future FPOS updates when they are deactivated :frowning:

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So all the more reason to make the switch to Open OS!

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Is it save to switch to Open OS (Android 5.1) after this horrible Upgrade to Android 6 :worried:? This Update made a mess of my Phone. There was a new Bootloop after the Upgrade, when I had deactivated the Google-Apps again.