Help! "E:failed to mount /sdcard (No such file or directory)"

The latest update did not go well. My phone won’t boot.

I don’t remember exactly what version it said it was (and I cannot find out), but it just appeared today.

When first touched download in the fairphone updater is said that before I could do this I needed to “disable secure startup” as my device is encrypted, and that I could do this in the settings. I went to the settings menu and the exact words “disable secure startup” were not used anywhere, so I just removed the pin to unlock. I went back to the updater and I was no longer getting the message asking me to “disable secure startup” so I assumed that I was good to go.

The update appeared to download fine, I touched the restart and install button. At first it seemed to be installing fine, the droid with the blue-net-on-tummy stood there for approx 2 mins. The the droid fell onto its back and had a red warning triangle (like this , only with the word “Error”, not “No command”). I held the power button to reboot it, and this time it had exactly this droid, complete with the “No Command” message.
This site suggested holding down combinations of volume and power buttons to get a boot menu, (which appeared) and then selecting “Apply update from SD card”. I did that and got the error “E:failed to mount /sdcard (No such file or directory)”. My instinct is that this is a failure to decrypt the SD card (this is exactly how a boot loader behaves if it cannot decrypt a partition it wants to boot from) but I don’t really know.

I tried another option on the boot menu “Wipe data/factory reset”. Everything on my phone is backed up, so I have no worries about factory resetting. It appeared to work, but it didn’t fix anything, the device still boots up with “No Command” and “Apply update from SD card” still gives “E:failed to mount /sdcard (No such file or directory)”.

Where do I go from here? Can I factory reset somehow? (In terms of computers I have a Ubuntu 18.04 and XOS High Sierra to work with)

Update; tried to follow the instructions " Manually install Fairphone OS for the Fairphone 2"

So far it seems like it is hanging;

ubuntu|17:21:13|Fairphone$ ls
FP2-gms-18.04.1-manual  FP2-gms-18.04.1-manual.zip
ubuntu|17:21:34|Fairphone$ cd FP2-gms-18.04.1-manual/
ubuntu|17:21:37|FP2-gms-18.04.1-manual$ ls
bin-darwin  flash-for-mac.command  flash-for-windows.bat  README.txt
bin-msys    flash-for-unix.sh      images
ubuntu|17:21:38|FP2-gms-18.04.1-manual$ sh flash-for-unix.sh 
** Fairphone OS 18.04.1 Manual Flashing Script **

Validating files...
Validation complete.

I will give in another hour or so, but looking at the script I think this should have moved on to the next step pretty quickly.

Try:

sudo sh flash-for-unix.sh

(Possibly without the sh bit)

2 Likes

Thanks, looking much better

One Fairphone 2 in fastboot mode found (serial number: ecd4b651).

Proceeding to flash the device.

target reported max download size of 536870912 bytes
sending 'rpm' (186 KB)...
OKAY [  0.009s]
writing 'rpm'...
OKAY [  0.055s]
finished. total time: 0.064s
target reported max download size of 536870912 bytes
sending 'sbl1' (274 KB)...
OKAY [  0.011s]
writing 'sbl1'...
OKAY [  0.066s]
finished. total time: 0.077s
target reported max download size of 536870912 bytes
sending 'tz' (334 KB)...
OKAY [  0.014s]
writing 'tz'...
OKAY [  0.059s]
finished. total time: 0.072s
target reported max download size of 536870912 bytes
sending 'modem' (57585 KB)...
OKAY [  1.806s]
writing 'modem'...
OKAY [  1.644s]
finished. total time: 3.450s
target reported max download size of 536870912 bytes
sending 'splash' (6075 KB)...
OKAY [  0.192s]
writing 'splash'...
OKAY [  0.160s]
finished. total time: 0.351s
target reported max download size of 536870912 bytes
sending 'aboot' (524 KB)...
OKAY [  0.020s]
writing 'aboot'...
OKAY [  0.027s]
finished. total time: 0.046s
target reported max download size of 536870912 bytes
sending 'boot' (14348 KB)...
OKAY [  0.451s]
writing 'boot'...
OKAY [  0.328s]
finished. total time: 0.779s
target reported max download size of 536870912 bytes
sending 'recovery' (13116 KB)...
OKAY [  0.412s]
writing 'recovery'...
OKAY [  0.297s]
finished. total time: 0.710s
target reported max download size of 536870912 bytes
erasing 'system'...
OKAY [  0.476s]
sending sparse 'system' 1/3 (517128 KB)...
OKAY [ 16.249s]
writing 'system' 1/3...
OKAY [ 12.340s]
sending sparse 'system' 2/3 (518933 KB)...
OKAY [ 16.365s]
writing 'system' 2/3...
OKAY [ 17.236s]
sending sparse 'system' 3/3 (43993 KB)...
OKAY [  1.383s]
writing 'system' 3/3...
OKAY [  1.225s]
finished. total time: 65.275s

Flashing successful!
Your Fairphone 2 will now run **Fairphone OS 18.04.1**.

Press Enter to reboot the device and complete the installation...
rebooting...


finished. total time: 0.050s

It appeared to reboot but is now flashing a red led. Gonna hope that’s just a lack of charge and look again in a bit.

Edit; ok working.

1 Like

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