my FP2 was working fine for 3 months, but suddenly it rebooted and is stuck in the boot screen (black screen, FAIRPHONE powered by android-logo) since then.
Nothing happens beside it’s getting hot. Battery was fully charged and it is charging when plugged in.
When I try to access recovery it’s stuck in the recovery bootscreen, but I can’t access anything.
Tried multiple times with all sim/sd-cards taken out.
Now I installed adb but do not really know how to use it. When I try adb devices it shows up, but just while trying to reach recovery, it’s not found while in the normal booting process.
Before that I had no problems with the phone, no random reboots or similar.
It was running Open OS 17.04.0 with xposed installed.
Any ideas? Thanks a lot!
Hello Juniorprofi…
I am not the best guy in this things… But i think when your device is listet in adb (devices) your FP is in Fastboot mode, also i think the fastboot mode shows this screen: Fairphone powerd by android-logo…
With my slim Cover i had the problem that one button always press power on - so i changed the buttons. Check your cover, maby there is something in the cover pressing vol. up / down…
I hope someone else with realy knowledge can help you out…
By ‘normal booting process’, you mean when it gets stuck on the logo, right? Does the phone show up in fastboot (i.e. run fastboot devices) at that stage?
Also, have you tried uninstalling xposed? If I recall correctly, there is a zip file you can apply from recovery.
Okay, so the phone isn’t booting into fastboot mode instead of normal mode.
I’m not that familiar with TWRP, to be honest, so I’m not sure whether that’s a known issue.
If you want to attempt to reinstall the OS to see whether this is a weird software gremlin, you could pull any files that you still need using adb (if you can still reach it when trying to boot recovery). If you can then get the phone to boot into fastboot mode (vol- + power). In fastboot mode you can then flash new firmware images (17.04) from a computer (essentially installation method 2). I’m not sure whether this also wipes out the userdata (in case the issue is with the userdata partition). I do recall a guide on how to reset userdata somewhere on the forum, but I can’t find it at the moment.
Okay, fastboot mode works and adb also when trying to reach recovery.
Now I would like to backup trough adb to save my user data.
But when I try the adb backup command I get Now unlock your device and confirm the backup operation...
My phone is encrypted, is there a way to unlock trough adb?
I keep forgetting about the encryption. In the recent versions of TWRP you’d normally be able to access encrypted user data, so presumably you’d also have access to the files via adb when TWRP is running. You could then manually copy at least the user files you know about (adb pull), even if adb backup requires an unlock that cannot be given. Seeing as your TWRP is potentially acting weird, I’m not sure what works and what doesn’t.
Actually, what might also be worth a shot is loading a newer recovery image (without flashing it). The TWRP port for fairphone has been kept up-to-date. In fastboot mode you can send the image and boot it without flashing it: fastboot boot twrp.img. If that recovery image behaves better, you potentially have a couple of extra tools.
It shouldn’t make a difference, but as said, the issue you’re having is not something I’ve encountered before. I’m not even sure if the issue is hardware of software (though charging etc. work, so it’s unlikely that the memory is completely bust), and if it is software, where the issue is (as normal boot, but also recovery are affected). It could be an issue on the system partition, it could also be an issue on the data partition, or an interaction between the two (or I’m just thinking in the wrong direction). Flashing anything but a data partition should leave your data alone - but if the problem is related to the data partition…
Thanks for your effort, Johannes!
With approach should I choose? Is there a way to find out more about my problem through fastboot/adb?
Can I just reinstall specific parts of the OS, so that data partition is not affected? Sorry, I’m completely new to Android/fastboot etc…
At this stage I’m just googling things to see if I can figure out why TWRP would get stuck at the loading screen. Some posts suggests wiping cache and userdata solved the issue, others suggest it sometimes just takes up to 10 minutes for it to load under some conditions. If you want to try wiping the cache via fastboot, this should do it fastboot format cache. Also, if you want to try disabling exposed, you can try that via adb by sideloading the uninstaller zip file adb sideload uninstaller.zip (It seems one of these should work, if you don’t have a copy somewhere).
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. For example: if you have openGapps installed, flashing a fresh copy of the system partition causes a boot loop with recent versions (which can normally be fixed by installing openGapps from recovery). Recovery appears to be independent - at worst you break the ability to use the Fairphone updater (but flashing the original recovery back solves that).
manual FP Open 17.04.0 from your computer. Just execute the flash.sh (or flash.bat if you are on Windows) script. This restores to default all your partitions except /data (your app’s data) and /data/media (your internal storage)
official TWRP (with fastboot flash recovery twrp-3.1.0-0-fp2.img), which supports decrypting the /data partition. recovery is in fact an independent partition by design, you won’t lost any data.
Boot to recovery (TWRP) and uninstall Xposed by flashing the latest ZIP. That should delete any data Xposed keeps on your data partition, if any. Well, I’ve checked the uninstall script and it doesn’t touch the data partition at all. I guess from this that Xposed is well-designed and doesn’t keep any data there.
Boot to TWRP, decrypt your data and make a backup with the Backup option
After that, plug your phone to your computer and backup all files. This includes TWRP folder with the previous per-partition backups.
Try to boot into your fresh system.
If the last step doesn’t work, then you’ll have a complete backup of all your data on your computer, at least. Then come here and some of us will try to help you restore most of your data.
Thanks Roboe!
I tried the flash.sh and got this: -bash: /fp2-sibon-17.04.0-manual-userdebug/flash.sh: Permission denied
Am I doing it the wrong way?
And before that I tried all 3 of your propositions, Johannes:
Formatting cache fails:
fastboot format cache Creating filesystem with parameters: Size: 671088640 Block size: 4096 Blocks per group: 32768 Inodes per group: 8192 Inode size: 256 Journal blocks: 2560 Label: Blocks: 163840 Block groups: 5 Reserved block group size: 39 Created filesystem with 11/40960 inodes and 5256/163840 blocks target reported max download size of 536870912 bytes erasing 'cache'... OKAY [ 0.014s] sending 'cache' (12520 KB)... OKAY [ 0.396s] writing 'cache'... FAILED (remote: flash write failure) finished. total time: 5.452s
I gave TWRP 30 minutes to load, no effect
with the sideload I get this: adb sideload /xposed-uninstaller-20160829-arm.zip opening '/xposed-uninstaller-20160829-arm.zip'... connecting... falling back to older sideload method... error: closed
You don’t have the sha256sum command. This is a hash-check to ensure file integrity. This way, if a file is corrupt, you don’t install something corrupt into your phone.
If you are in a Debian/Ubuntu system, then install the coreutils package with sudo apt install coreutils
fastboot failing means something is bad at a low level (eMMC partitions corrupted or real hardware faliure). Contact support, your device is under warranty yet.