Meizu Pro 5 - switch to staging channel, stuck at purple screen

[Mihael]

I switched from rc-proposed to staging channel with

sudo system-image-cli -vvvv --switch ubuntu-touch/staging/meizu.en

and it installs everything fine but when it is time to boot, it get stuck at the purple screen with the dots still pulsating. I can ssh into the phone, everything works through ssh but not from the phone screen.

Device: turbo.

Thank you for any help!

mihael

[Seth (seth-ciango)]

I recommend using the ubuntu-touch/staging/ubuntu channel instead. It suffers from the same boot problem as staging/meizu.en, but it has fewer deficiencies and Chinese language apps. I think it was also missing the terminal app last time I checked. The "custom" files are more up to date for staging/ubuntu as well.

staging/meizu.en:
209: description='ubuntu=20170221,device=20160824-d33b825,custom=20160831-991-24-16,version=209'

staging/ubuntu:
204: description='ubuntu=20170221,device=20160824-d33b825,custom=20170221,version=204

Every Turbo 16.04 image after February 21 seems to be broken at boot. I believe the problems are unity8 related, but I can't SSH in to check the logs. If I upgrade a working 16.04 image to the latest unity8 version, I get stuck in the purple Ubuntu boot screen. There are lot of bugs involving Bluetooth, PolicyKit, and SnapdLoginService as well.

The last bootable revision of staging/meizu.en is --revision=209.
The last bootable revision of staging/ubuntu is --revision=204.

You'll need to switch to one of those to successfully boot. However, since you can SSH in, can you run "cat /var/log/syslog" and upload that information here? As of last week, I was still unable to SSH into the phone image based on the daily build, but that may have changed.

Additionally, whenever I change channels to staging/ubuntu or staging/meizu.en, my recovery image is corrupted, and I have to run "fastboot flash recovery recovery-turbo.img." I'd recommend downloading the file again just in case you need it:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Devices

Notes in case you or anyone else gets stuck and can't switch channels or revisions via SSH:

Chances are your recovery.img has been corrupted from the staging channels. Download recovery-turbo.img from the link above.
1)Boot into Fastboot and flash the newly downloaded recover-turbo.img.
2)Boot into Recovery and flash your phone to a working channel.

More Details:
1) To boot into Fastboot to flash a new recovery.img, power off your device. Press and hold both the Volume Down button and the Power button. The device will boot into the Meizu screen with "fastboot" loaded at the bottom. Connect the phone via USB. From a desktop terminal, cd to the location of your recover-turbo.img and run:
fastboot flash recovery recovery-turbo.img

2) To reboot into Recovery mode, power off your device. Press and hold both the Volume Up button and the Power button. Keep holding both buttons until you see the Meizu logo. After you release both buttons, you'll eventually be prompted with a static Ubuntu logo on a black screen. From a desktop terminal, run:

ubuntu-device-flash touch --device=turbo --channel=ubuntu-touch/staging/ubuntu --revision=204

[Mihael (mihaelmilea)]

Thank you for your reply!

Through ssh I did

sudo system-image-cli -vvvv --switch ubuntu-touch/staging/ubuntu

to install the latest staging image. I got the same result: stuck at unity-system-compositor-spinner.

But I got to ssh into it and run "cat /var/log/syslog" and I attached the result.

Then I switched back to rc-proposed with:

sudo system-image-cli -vvvv --switch ubuntu-touch/rc-proposed/meizu.en

I guess using system-image-cli from the device instead of ubuntu-device-flash from a linux machine which has the decive attached through a usb cable makes it that the recovery image is not touched (altered) but I am not sure (I still try to understand the differences between system-image-cli and ubuntu-device-flash in what they do) - this is just a comment regarding what you said about the recovery image.

Thank you for any help on this!

mihael