Cannot reinstall Fairphone OS or Fairphone Open OS - only Lineage

[modirawatleng]

Hi,
my strange problem began with watching a video on Twitter with a Fairphone Open 18.04.1 on a Fairphone 2: suddenly the display froze, and I had to reboot.
This reboot, however, entered a endless boot loop. After the initial logo the Fairphone “startup bubbles” appeared two or three times, then it stuck, and rebooted again.
I searched the forum and tested all recommendations (taking out the cards, checking the slim case and the buttons, finally doing a factory reset), also this and this.

Then, I decided to try a reinstall and flashed the phone, first with Fairphone Open, then with Fairphone OS. In both cases the phone started into the endless boot loop.
After that I even tried Ubuntu Phone - with the same result: new startup logo (so I seemingly had installed Ubuntu successfully), but endless boot loop.

Now the strange part: With almost all hope lost, I tried Lineage OS according to this wiki. This means, I flashed the phone with a TWRP image, copied the Lineage zip to the sd card, and reinstalled using TWRP. And it worked!

So, unintentionally I now have a Lineage 14.1 running on my Fairphone, and I give it a try and test it.
But: I don’t understand what caused the problem, and why I cannot install Fairphone Open OS or Fairphone OS. Any suggestions?

Kind regards
Juergen

[AnotherElk]

But: I don’t understand what caused the problem, and why I cannot install Fairphone Open OS or Fairphone OS. Any suggestions?

The guide to install LineageOS tells you to wipe partitions in TWRP (“Installing LineageOS from recovery” steps 5 and 6).
That actually helps when something is wrong with an OS installation. Did you do something like that before earlier install tries?

Perhaps you did a factory reset before?
Mind, a factory reset on the Fairphone 2 doesn’t wipe partitions, it only deletes every user data and Apps and leaves OS and recovery as is, so if somehow the OS is corrupt, it stays that way after a factory reset. If somehow the system partition is corrupt, I guess it stays that way after a factory reset.

If you still feel like it, try to install Fairphone OS or Fairphone Open OS now. But wipe the partitions before that as you did with LineageOS.

You can easily install Fairphone Open OS with the TWRP recovery …

FP2 cannot install Fairphone Open 17.10.1

You could try the TWRP way to completely wipe the phone and make a clean install from scratch … I found that to be very helpful and reliable when trying out different OSes. Attention! This will remove the installed OS and all your data from the phone (which most things labeled “factory reset” on the Fairphone 2 will not completely do). Get TWRP running as recovery (skip this step if you have the latest version running already): Download the latest TWRP image from the “Download Links” sectio…

You can even use TWRP to install Fairphone OS (but in this case the manual install via fastboot is recommended) …

Problems going back to fairphone os

Are you still able to boot the phone into the TWRP recovery of Fairphone Open OS (Volume Up when starting or rebooting)? If so, you might try installing Fairphone OS via TWRP using these files … (Be aware that as I read it, you need to install two files in succession this way to get to the current OS version … the “FP2 - Update file of Fairphone OS 1.13.0” file and then the “FP2 - Update file of Fairphone OS 18.01.1 from 1.13.0” file, as the 1.13.0 file is the last complete OTA file given ther…

[modirawatleng]

Thank you very much!

Using the extended wipe of TWRP, and then installing fp2-sibon-18.04.1-ota-userdebug.zip did the trick!

(I had tried the switcher files, which cannot be installed with TWRP.)

[modirawatleng]

Damn,

two months later, again after watching a youtube-video, I have the same endless reboot-phenomenon.

This time, unfortunately, it doesn’t matter which OS I install: Fairphone OS, Fairphone Open, and Ubuntu Touch all install flawlessly, but enter an endless reboot then.

Only Lineage OS boots properly, but lineage-15.1-20180910 doesn’t recognise wifi.

Is my phone bricked, or does anybody have another idea to end the reboot-loop? I would still prefer to run Fairphone Open.

Kind regards
JueShire

[AnotherElk]

This time, unfortunately, it doesn’t matter which OS I install: Fairphone OS, Fairphone Open, and Ubuntu Touch all install flawlessly, but enter an endless reboot then.

That would indicate a hardware problem I think.
The only thing I could think of otherwise would be tweaking CPU settings to perhaps work around a performance or heat problem … e.g. with Kernel Adiutor or with LineageOS performance profiles.

If you happen to have #fairphoneangels in your vicinity, they could perhaps help by swapping modules to find out whether a module is at fault, even if the expensive core module seems most likely to me.

Else … install one of Fairphone’s OSes and #contactsupport …

Mine works fine

Running FP2 with Fairphone Open OS since 2016

… and quickly for a possible warranty case, if it was the end of 2016.

Only Lineage OS boots properly, but lineage-15.1-20180910 doesn’t recognise wifi.

Can you give more details on that?
WiFi works fine for me.

Edit: Wait … does LineageOS not do the reboots?

[modirawatleng]

Thanks for answering.
Lineage OS does NOT go into a reboot loop - that’s the weird part of the problem.

On the wifi problem: Although I installed the latest modem.zip, I get a

System UI isn’t responding
Close app // Wait

when looking for a wifi network. Whenever I switch on wifi in the settings, it switches itself off after a few seconds.

The installation of Fairphone Open ends with:

Updater process ended with ERROR: 7
Error installing zip file ‘external_sd/fp2-sibon-18.04.1.ota-userdebug.zip’.

Couldn’t find out what ‘ERROR 7’ is. (Ubuntu installed without errors but entered the boot loop nevertheless.)

[AnotherElk]

Couldn’t find out what ‘ERROR 7’ is.

https://forum.fairphone.com/search?q=%22error%207%22

… seems to amount to some unexpected or incompatible data already present, but I assume you wiped everything (as with the earlier problem) before changing OSes?

On the wifi problem: Although I installed the latest modem.zip, I get a

System UI isn’t responding
Close app // Wait

when looking for a wifi network. Whenever I switch on wifi in the settings, it switches itself off after a few seconds.

Can you try at a completely different place, where none of the networks present in the location where the problem occurs are there?

There are cases where certain router configurations seem to give the Fairphone 2 some trouble …

3rd phone reboots also

yes I agree with that. wifi at other places works without reboots, and at home the 5G wifi works without reboots to it is only the 2,4Ghz wifi which causes reboots on my current fairphone (and probably on the first two aswell) My family (all with Iphones) do not have this problem . I think now that it is the combination from my AP and my fairphone using the 2,4Ghz wifi which causes the reboots

Random reboots with (official) Lineage OS?

For me it is also very stable. Unless I use my (Apple) WLAN on work, it crashes at some point. With your bootimage the Bluetooth does not work anymore, right?

[modirawatleng]

Can you try at a completely different place, where none of the networks present in the location where the problem occurs are there?

In the Wi-Fi preferences, I have the MAC address 02:00:00:00:00:00. This seems odd to me.

[AnotherElk]

In the Wi-Fi preferences, I have the MAC address 02:00:00:00:00:00. This seems odd to me.

Some internet searching brings up a lot of hits for this address, either when WiFi is off (but my settings show a valid MAC address when WiFi is off) or developer trouble when fetching the MAC address via the Android API.

Is it still the same after you turn off the phone completely, then turn it on again?

Can you try to (re-)flash the latest modem.zip?

And …

I assume you wiped everything (as with the earlier problem) before changing OSes?

[modirawatleng]

I wiped everything a dozen times, and I tried different modem.zips. No change.

Besides that, the battery drain of Lineage OS is absolutely intolerable.

[AnotherElk]

Besides that, the battery drain of Lineage OS is absolutely intolerable.

This is also not normal.

I’m giving up, I suspect broken hardware.
Until anybody else comes up with something, it seems your options are module swapping by #fairphoneangels to identify a broken module, or installing one of Fairphone’s OSes and then #contactsupport .

[modirawatleng]

Nevertheless, thanks for caring.
After two years and seven months my fairphone experience seems to end.

A modular phone doesn’t make sense if you can only replace minor modules like cameras or the display. Repair of the core module costs at least 378.05 EUR according to support. It’s cheaper to buy a new and more recent phone.

[AnotherElk]

A modular phone doesn’t make sense if you can only replace minor modules like cameras or the display. Repair of the core module costs at least 378.05 EUR according to support.

For what it’s worth … you can replace the core module yourself, but it simply is the most expensive part of the phone …

Fairphone 2 Core-Modul

[modirawatleng]

… and it’s the same core module I bought almost three years ago … still with proprietary elements. A fully free module would be worth the money.

[Ingo]

Maybe the Librem 5 by Purism is something for you, then. But it got delayed until 2019 recently.