My First Experience Connecting to the PinePhone via Serial Console

My PinePhone Arrived

My PinePhone (BraveHeart edition) arrived a few weeks ago, but I have not had time play with it. Over the weekend I had an epic snowball fight with my wife and children while we were on a nature walk. My Nexus 6p had been neglectfully left in my back pocket and during the escapade it succumbed to fatal injuries. It is time to breath life into my new PinePhone, but first I wanted to have a look around. I am going to connect to the PinePhone using the UART serial console that is integrated into the audio jack of the PinePhone. My client of choice is of course the venerable Emacs serial-term.

What is a serial console and UART

For our purposes, a console is a program connected to a serial port on the host computer providing a textual interface to a Linux shell. Of course, this is an over simplification, if you are not familiar with serial communication and would like to learn about it in depth, then I think you will be interested in reading through this Text Terminal HOWTO and Serial HOWTO.

The UART (Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter) receives bits sequentially, reconstructs them into bytes, then stores those bytes in a buffer where they can be read by a computer. Conversely, a transmitting UART converts parallel data from bytes to bits and then transmits those bits in serial to a receiving UART. In that respect, UART is bidirectional, allowing the host computer to both send and receive messages over a serial connection. The Serial HOWTO mentioned earlier contains this short introduction to UARTs as well as a list of serial communication programs and utilities.

Connect to the PinePhone over UART

The PinePhone has a serial port integrated with the headphone audio jack socket. I purchased a 3.3V TTL-232R Serial UART cable that adapts USB to a 3.5mm audio jack from Amazon, but you can also purchase one from the Pine Store. Any USB to 3.3V TTL converter that uses RS-232 for serial communication transmission and adapts to a 3.5mm audio jack will do. To put PinePhone’s audio jack socket into UART mode, place the 6th contact on the dipswitch into the off position. Next, insert the serial connector’s jack plug into the phone’s jack socket and plug the USB end of the connector into your dev box.

To confirm that your computer has detected the UART console simply run the usb-devices command and filter the output for the text “UART”.

usb-devices | grep -C4 -i uart

T:  Bus=01 Lev=01 Prnt=01 Port=01 Cnt=02 Dev#= 57 Spd=12  MxCh= 0
D:  Ver= 2.00 Cls=00(>ifc ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS= 8 #Cfgs=  1
P:  Vendor=0403 ProdID=6001 Rev=06.00
S:  Manufacturer=FTDI
S:  Product=FT232R USB UART
S:  SerialNumber=<REDACTED>
C:  #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=a0 MxPwr=90mA
I:  If#=0x0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 2 Cls=ff(vend.) Sub=ff Prot=ff Driver=ftdi_sio

The first line tells us the bus number, port and device number, which is useful, but what we would actually like is the TTY device name. Looking further down the list we can see that the manufacturer is FTDI. We can now filter the dmesg output by the manufacturer name to get the name of the device.

dmesg | grep -i FTDI

[1458143.861386] usb 1-2: Manufacturer: FTDI
[1458143.864821] ftdi_sio 1-2:1.0: FTDI USB Serial Device converter detected
[1458143.865597] usb 1-2: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now attached to ttyUSB0

Now that we know that the name of the device is ttyUSB0, we can look up the group membership required to attach to it.

ls -lah /dev/ttyUSB0

crw-rw---- 1 root uucp 188, 0 Mar 24 06:16 /dev/ttyUSB0

The output from ls tells us that we need to be in the uucp group. We will use the groups command to find out if my user is already of member of uucp.

groups $USER

wheel audio video usb users dustfinger plugdev libvirt docker developer

Since my user is not a member of the uucp group, I will add the group membership using gpasswd.

sudo gpasswd -a $USER uucp

Adding user dustfinger to group uucp

Now that we have the right group membership, we can establish a serial connection.

Connect with Emacs serial-mode

If you are an Emacs user, like me, then the easiest way to connect to a device over UART is to use the built in Emacs serial-term. The documentation for Emacs serial-term can be found by typing C-h i d m emacs <RET> m Serial Terminal <RET>. If you are using any other serial terminal program, then you will need to pass it the same parameters as shown below, but exactly how the parameters are passed and what the defaults of those parameters are, will likely be different. Please take a moment and read the man page of your chosen serial terminal program so that you understand how to pass it the required parameters.

If you would like to watch the output while your PinePhone boots up, then turn the PinePhone off before making the serial connection. To invoke Serial Terminal in Emacs, type: M-x serial-term <RET>. Emacs Serial Terminal will prompt for the following parameters:

Parameter	Value to enter
Port	/dev/ttyUSB0
Speed	115200

The speed is in bits per second and is called the baud rate. The connection will fail to establish if you do not enter the correct baud rate.

Other terminal programs may require that you explicitly enter the parity, data bits and stopbit time parameters. As it turns out, the Emacs defaults for these these parameters are compatible with the PinePhone’s UART, so they do not need to be set explicitly:

Parameter	Value to enter
Parity	n
data bits	8
stopbit time	1

Once the required parameters have been passed to Emacs Serial Terminal, Emacs should open a new buffer that is named after the device. In my case the buffer is named /dev/ttyUSB0/. If your PinePhone is powered off, then turn it on and you will see output similar to the following as it boots:

U-Boot SPL 2020.01 (Jan 09 2020 - 12:17:54 +0000)
DRAM: 2048 MiB
Trying to boot from MMC2
NOTICE:  BL31: v2.1(release):v3.10.0_rc3-151-ga4b61dc7d9
NOTICE:  BL31: Built : 16:21:59, Jun 12 2019
NOTICE:  BL31: Detected Allwinner A64/H64/R18 SoC (1689)
NOTICE:  BL31: Found U-Boot DTB at 0x408e1a8, model: Pine64 LTS
NOTICE:  BL31: PMIC: Detected AXP803 on RSB.


U-Boot 2020.01 (Jan 09 2020 - 12:17:54 +0000) Allwinner Technology

CPU:   Allwinner A64 (SUN50I)
Model: Pine64 LTS
DRAM:  2 GiB
MMC:   mmc@1c0f000: 0, mmc@1c11000: 1
Loading Environment from FAT... Unable to use mmc 1:1... In:    serial
Out:   serial
Err:   serial
Net:   phy interface7
Could not get PHY for ethernet@1c30000: addr 1
No ethernet found.

starting USB...
Bus usb@1c1a000: USB EHCI 1.00
Bus usb@1c1a400: USB OHCI 1.0
Bus usb@1c1b000: USB EHCI 1.00
Bus usb@1c1b400: USB OHCI 1.0
scanning bus usb@1c1a000 for devices... 1 USB Device(s) found
scanning bus usb@1c1a400 for devices... 1 USB Device(s) found
scanning bus usb@1c1b000 for devices... 1 USB Device(s) found
scanning bus usb@1c1b400 for devices... 1 USB Device(s) found
       scanning usb for storage devices... 0 Storage Device(s) found
Hit any key to stop autoboot:  0
switch to partitions #0, OK
mmc1(part 0) is current device
Scanning mmc 1:1...
Found U-Boot script /boot.scr
919 bytes read in 2 ms (448.2 KiB/s)
## Executing script at 4fc00000
gpio: pin 114 (gpio 114) value is 1
Booting from eMMC
arch=arm
baudrate=115200
board=sunxi
board_name=sunxi
boot_a_script=load ${devtype} ${devnum}:${distro_bootpart} ${scriptaddr} ${prefix}${script}; source ${scriptaddr}
boot_efi_binary=if fdt addr ${fdt_addr_r}; then bootefi bootmgr ${fdt_addr_r};else bootefi bootmgr ${fdtcontroladdr};fi;load ${devtype} ${devnum}:${distro_bootpart} ${kernel_
addr_r} efi/boot/bootaa64.efi; if fdt addr ${fdt_addr_r}; then bootefi ${kernel_addr_r} ${fdt_addr_r};else bootefi ${kernel_addr_r} ${fdtcontroladdr};fi
boot_extlinux=sysboot ${devtype} ${devnum}:${distro_bootpart} any ${scriptaddr} ${prefix}${boot_syslinux_conf}
boot_net_usb_start=usb start
boot_prefixes=/ /boot/
boot_script_dhcp=boot.scr.uimg
boot_scripts=boot.scr.uimg boot.scr
boot_syslinux_conf=extlinux/extlinux.conf
boot_targets=fel mmc_auto usb0 pxe dhcp
bootargs=init=/init.sh rw console=tty0 console=ttyS0,115200 no_console_suspend earlycon=uart,mmio32,0x01c28000 panic=10 consoleblank=0 loglevel=1 cma=256M PMOS_NO_OUTPUT_REDI
RECT pmos_boot=/dev/mmcblk2p1 pmos_root=/dev/mmcblk2p2
bootcmd=run distro_bootcmd
bootcmd_dhcp=run boot_net_usb_start; if dhcp ${scriptaddr} ${boot_script_dhcp}; then source ${scriptaddr}; fi;setenv efi_fdtfile ${fdtfile}; setenv efi_old_vci ${bootp_vci};s
etenv efi_old_arch ${bootp_arch};setenv bootp_vci PXEClient:Arch:00011:UNDI:003000;setenv bootp_arch 0xb;if dhcp ${kernel_addr_r}; then tftpboot ${fdt_addr_r} dtb/${efi_fdtfi
le};if fdt addr ${fdt_addr_r}; then bootefi ${kernel_addr_r} ${fdt_addr_r}; else bootefi ${kernel_addr_r} ${fdtcontroladdr};fi;fi;setenv bootp_vci ${efi_old_vci};setenv bootp
_arch ${efi_old_arch};setenv efi_fdtfile;setenv efi_old_arch;setenv efi_old_vci;
bootcmd_fel=if test -n ${fel_booted} && test -n ${fel_scriptaddr}; then echo '(FEL boot)'; source ${fel_scriptaddr}; fi
bootcmd_mmc0=devnum=0; run mmc_boot
bootcmd_mmc1=devnum=1; run mmc_boot
bootcmd_mmc_auto=if test ${mmc_bootdev} -eq 1; then run bootcmd_mmc1; run bootcmd_mmc0; elif test ${mmc_bootdev} -eq 0; then run bootcmd_mmc0; run bootcmd_mmc1; fi
bootcmd_pxe=run boot_net_usb_start; dhcp; if pxe get; then pxe boot; fi
bootcmd_usb0=devnum=0; run usb_boot
bootdelay=2
bootdev=2
bootfstype=ext4
bootm_size=0xa000000
console=ttyS0,115200
cpu=armv8
devplist=1
dfu_alt_info_ram=kernel ram 0x40080000 0x1000000;fdt ram 0x4FA00000 0x100000;ramdisk ram 0x4FE00000 0x4000000
distro_bootcmd=for target in ${boot_targets}; do run bootcmd_${target}; done
efi_dtb_prefixes=/ /dtb/ /dtb/current/
ethaddr=02:ba:3a:fe:45:68
fdt_addr_r=0x4FA00000
fdtcontroladdr=b9f31258
fdtfile=allwinner/sun50i-a64-pine64-lts.dtb
fileaddr=4fc00000
filesize=397
kernel_addr_r=0x40080000
load_efi_dtb=load ${devtype} ${devnum}:${distro_bootpart} ${fdt_addr_r} ${prefix}${efi_fdtfile}
mmc_boot=if mmc dev ${devnum}; then devtype=mmc; run scan_dev_for_boot_part; fi
mmc_bootdev=1
partitions=name=loader1,start=8k,size=32k,uuid=${uuid_gpt_loader1};name=loader2,size=984k,uuid=${uuid_gpt_loader2};name=esp,size=128M,bootable,uuid=${uuid_gpt_esp};name=syste
m,size=-,uuid=${uuid_gpt_system};
preboot=usb start
pxefile_addr_r=0x4FD00000
ramdisk_addr_r=0x4FE00000
scan_dev_for_boot=echo Scanning ${devtype} ${devnum}:${distro_bootpart}...; for prefix in ${boot_prefixes}; do run scan_dev_for_extlinux; run scan_dev_for_scripts; done;run s
can_dev_for_efi;
scan_dev_for_boot_part=part list ${devtype} ${devnum} -bootable devplist; env exists devplist || setenv devplist 1; for distro_bootpart in ${devplist}; do if fstype ${devtype
} ${devnum}:${distro_bootpart} bootfstype; then run scan_dev_for_boot; fi; done; setenv devplist
scan_dev_for_efi=setenv efi_fdtfile ${fdtfile}; for prefix in ${efi_dtb_prefixes}; do if test -e ${devtype} ${devnum}:${distro_bootpart} ${prefix}${efi_fdtfile}; then run loa
d_efi_dtb; fi;done;if test -e ${devtype} ${devnum}:${distro_bootpart} efi/boot/bootaa64.efi; then echo Found EFI removable media binary efi/boot/bootaa64.efi; run boot_efi_bi
nary; echo EFI LOAD FAILED: continuing...; fi; setenv efi_fdtfile
scan_dev_for_extlinux=if test -e ${devtype} ${devnum}:${distro_bootpart} ${prefix}${boot_syslinux_conf}; then echo Found ${prefix}${boot_syslinux_conf}; run boot_extlinux; ec
ho SCRIPT FAILED: continuing...; fi
scan_dev_for_scripts=for script in ${boot_scripts}; do if test -e ${devtype} ${devnum}:${distro_bootpart} ${prefix}${script}; then echo Found U-Boot script ${prefix}${script}
; run boot_a_script; echo SCRIPT FAILED: continuing...; fi; done
scriptaddr=0x4FC00000
serial#=<REDACTED>
soc=sunxi
stderr=serial,vidconsole
stdin=serial,usbkbd
stdout=serial,vidconsole
usb_boot=usb start; if usb dev ${devnum}; then devtype=usb; run scan_dev_for_boot_part; fi
uuid_gpt_esp=c12a7328-f81f-11d2-ba4b-00a0c93ec93b
uuid_gpt_system=b921b045-1df0-41c3-af44-4c6f280d3fae

Environment size: 4745/131068 bytes
Loading DTB
29575 bytes read in 3 ms (9.4 MiB/s)
Loading Initramfs
4580494 bytes read in 202 ms (21.6 MiB/s)
Loading Kernel
15091720 bytes read in 658 ms (21.9 MiB/s)
gpio: pin 115 (gpio 115) value is 1
Resizing FDT
Booting kernel
gpio: pin 116 (gpio 116) value is 1
## Loading init Ramdisk from Legacy Image at 4fe00000 ...
   Image Name:   uInitrd
   Image Type:   AArch64 Linux RAMDisk Image (uncompressed)
   Data Size:    4580430 Bytes = 4.4 MiB
   Load Address: 00000000
   Entry Point:  00000000
   Verifying Checksum ... OK
## Flattened Device Tree blob at 4fa00000
   Booting using the fdt blob at 0x4fa00000
EHCI failed to shut down host controller.
   Loading Ramdisk to 49ba1000, end 49fff44e ... OK
   Loading Device Tree to 0000000049b96000, end 0000000049ba0fff ... OK

Starting kernel ...

[    0.000000] Booting Linux on physical CPU 0x0000000000 [0x410fd034]
[    0.000000] Linux version 5.4.0 (pmos@build) (gcc version 9.2.0 (Alpine 9.2.0)) #2-postmarketos-allwinner SMP Sat Dec 7 14:14:33 UTC 2019
[    0.000000] Machine model: PinePhone
[    0.000000] earlycon: uart0 at MMIO32 0x0000000001c28000 (options '')
[    0.000000] printk: bootconsole [uart0] enabled
### postmarketOS initramfs ###
Configuring kernel firmware image search path
modprobe: module sun6i_mipi_dsi not found in modules.dep
modprobe: module sun4i_drm not found in modules.dep
modprobe: module pwm_sun4i not found in modules.dep
modprobe: module sun8i_mixer not found in modules.dep
modprobe: module ext4 not found in modules.dep
modprobe: module usb_f_rndis not found in modules.dep
NOTE: Waiting 10 seconds for the framebuffer /dev/fb0.
If your device does not have a framebuffer, disable this with:
no_framebuffer=true in <https://postmarketos.org/deviceinfo>
Setting framebuffer mode to: U:720x1440p-0
Setup usb network
  /sys/class/android_usb does not exist, skipping android_usb
  Setting up an USB gadget through configfs
Starting udhcpd
  Using interface usb0
  Start the dhcpcd daemon (forks into background)
Mount boot partition (/dev/mmcblk2p1)
Extract /boot/initramfs-postmarketos-allwinner-extra
31639 blocks
Check/repair root filesystem (/dev/mmcblk2p2)
e2fsck 1.45.5 (07-Jan-2020)
pmOS_root: recovering journal
Setting free blocks count to 37000 (was 36998)
pmOS_root: clean, 23951/100080 files, 227704/264704 blocks
Resize root filesystem (/dev/mmcblk2p2)
resize2fs 1.45.5 (07-Jan-2020)
The filesystem is already 264704 (4k) blocks long.  Nothing to do!

Mount root partition (/dev/mmcblk2p2)
umount: can't unmount /dev: Invalid argument

   OpenRC 0.42.1.034fce6328 is starting up Linux 5.4.0 (aarch64)

/lib/rc/sh/init.sh: line 15: can't create /dev/null: Read-only file system
 * md5sum is missing, which suggests /usr is not mounted
 * If you have separate /usr, it must be mounted by initramfs
 * If not, you should check coreutils is installed correctly
 * Mounting /proc ... [ ok ]
 * Mounting /run ... * /run/openrc: creating directory
 * /run/lock: creating directory
 * /run/lock: correcting owner
/lib/rc/sh/init.sh: line 101: can't create /dev/null: Read-only file system
/lib/rc/sh/gendepends.sh: line 28: can't create /dev/null: Read-only file system
 * Caching service dependencies ... [ ok ]
 * Clock skew detected with `(null)'
 * Adjusting mtime of `/run/openrc/deptree' to Fri Jan 10 19:03:07 2020

 * WARNING: clock skew detected!
 * Mounting devtmpfs on /dev ... [ ok ]
 * Mounting /dev/mqueue ... [ ok ]
 * Mounting /dev/pts ... [ ok ]
 * Mounting /dev/shm ... [ ok ]
 * Mount subpartitions of /dev/mmcblk2
device-mapper: reload ioctl on mmcblk2p1  failed: Resource busy
create/reload failed on mmcblk2p1
device-mapper: reload ioctl on mmcblk2p2  failed: Resource busy
create/reload failed on mmcblk2p2
 * Mounting /sys ... [ ok ]
 * Mounting security filesystem ... [ ok ]
 * Mounting debug filesystem ... [ ok ]
 * Mounting config filesystem ... [ ok ]
 * Mounting persistent storage (pstore) filesystem ... [ ok ]
 * Starting udev ... [ ok ]
 * Generating a rule to create a /dev/root symlink ... [ ok ]
 * Populating /dev with existing devices through uevents ... [ ok ]
 * WARNING: clock skew detected!
 * Loading modules ... [ ok ]
 * Setting system clock using the hardware clock [UTC] ... [ ok ]
 * Setting the local clock based on last shutdown time ... [ ok ]
 * Checking local filesystems  ...pmOS_root: clean, 23951/100080 files, 227704/264704 blocks
pmOS_boot was not cleanly unmounted, check forced.
pmOS_boot: 18/16704 files (22.2% non-contiguous), 48645/66560 blocks
 * Filesystems repaired
 [ !! ]
 * Remounting root filesystem read/write ... [ ok ]
 * Remounting filesystems ... [ ok ]
 * Mounting local filesystems ... [ ok ]
 * Configuring kernel parameters ...sysctl: error: 'net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies' is an unknown key
 [ ok ]
 * Creating user login records ... [ ok ]
 * Wiping /tmp directory ... [ ok ]
 * Setting hostname ... [ ok ]
 * Starting busybox syslog ... [ ok ]
 * WARNING: clock skew detected!
 * Starting System Message Bus ... [ ok ]
 * Starting RNG Daemon ... [ ok ]
 * Starting WPA Supplicant ... [ ok ]
 * Starting networkmanager ... [ ok ]
 * Starting chronyd ... [ ok ]
 * Enabling EG25 WWAN module ... * /run/lightdm: creating directory
 * /run/lightdm: correcting owner
 * Starting Display Manager ... [ ok ]
 * Starting oFono ... [ ok ]
 * Starting sshd ... [ ok ]
 * Activating swap file ...Configured swap file size is 0, skipping creation.
 [ ok ]
 * Starting local ... [ ok ]

Welcome to postmarketOS
Kernel 5.4.0 on an aarch64 (/dev/ttyS0)
pine64-pinephone login: demo

If your PinePhone was already turned on when you established the serial connection you might be presented with a blank screen. In that case, if you hit the <RET> key, that should cause the welcome message and login prompt to be rendered to the screen.

Have a look around

To sign in to the postMarketOS hwtest (factory test) use the following default credentials

user	password
demo	demo

Welcome to postmarketOS
Kernel 5.4.0 on an aarch64 (/dev/ttyS0)
pine64-pinephone login: demo
Password:
Welcome to postmarketOS!

This distribution is based on Alpine Linux.
Read both our wikis to find a large amount of how-to guides and
general information about administrating and development.
See <https://wiki.postmarketos.org> and <https://wiki.alpinelinux.org>.

You may change this message by editing /etc/motd.

pine64-pinephone:~$

First, let’s look at what is in the demo user’s home directory.

pine64-pinephone:~$ ls -lah

total 48K
drwxr-xr-x    4 demo     root        4.0K Aug 23 10:49 .
drwxr-xr-x    3 root     root        4.0K Jan 10  2020 ..
-rw-------    1 demo     demo        1.7K Aug 23 11:14 .ash_history
drwxr-xr-x    3 demo     demo        4.0K Aug 23 10:49 .cache
drwx------    2 demo     demo        4.0K Jan 10  2020 .ssh
-rwxr-xr-x    1 demo     root          90 Mar  7 22:57 .xsession
-rw-------    1 demo     demo        8.8K Aug 23 10:49 .xsession-errors
-rw-------    1 demo     demo       10.6K Aug 23  2019 .xsession-errors.old
pine64-pinephone:~$

Notice that there is a .ssh/ directory that must have been created during setup at the factory.

pine64-pinephone:~$ ls -lah .ssh

pine64-pinephone:~$ ls -lah .ssh
total 12K
drwx------    2 demo     demo        4.0K Jan 10  2020 .
drwxr-xr-x    4 demo     root        4.0K Aug 23 10:49 ..
-rw-r--r--    1 demo     demo         397 Jan 10  2020 authorized_keys
pine64-pinephone:~$

We can see that the directory contains a file named authorized_keys which we will revisit momentarily. I wonder what services are currently running:

pine64-pinephone:~$ rc-status

Runlevel: default
 dbus
 [  started 00:45:35 (0) ]
 lightdm
 [  started 00:45:32 (0) ]
 haveged
 [  started 00:45:35 (0) ]
 wpa_supplicant
 [  started 00:45:35 (0) ]
 networkmanager
 [  started 00:45:35 (0) ]
 chronyd
 [  started  ]
 eg25
 [  started  ]
 ofono
 [  started  ]
 sshd
 [  started  ]
 swapfile
 [  started  ]
 udev-postmount
 [  started  ]
 local
 [  started  ]
Dynamic Runlevel: hotplugged
Dynamic Runlevel: needed/wanted
 sysfs
 [  started  ]
 fsck
 [  started  ]
 root
 [  started  ]
 localmount
 [  started  ]
Dynamic Runlevel: manual
pine64-pinephone:~$

Even in light of the fact that we are only running the factory test suite, I cannot tell you how much I appreciate to see so few services running on a mobile phone. There is nothing unusual about the services that I see running. OFono is a linux daemon for mobile telephony application support. Haveged is for entropy gathering and random number generation. The eg25 daemon is for the PinePhone EG25 modem.

I can see that wpa_supplicant service is running along with the NetworkManager service, those will be for testing WiFi. The SSH daemon is also running, but I don’t imagine that is necessary for the factory tests, so I will remove the SSH key and shut down sshd. After that, the next time I boot my phone into the factory test program I will rest at ease knowing that the SSH daemon is not running, and the default user account home directory does not contain a publicly known SSH key.

Since wpa_supplicant is running we should see if there are any configured WiFi access points. I checked /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf and found that it was empty. I will also check to see if there were any connections known to the NetworkManager by using the nmcli.

pine64-pinephone:~$ nmcli connection show

That produced no results, which is expected. We can also get a list of devices from nmcli by using the device sub-command.

nmcli device show

GENERAL.DEVICE:                         wlan0
GENERAL.TYPE:                           wifi
GENERAL.DEVICE:                         wlan0
GENERAL.TYPE:                           wifi
GENERAL.HWADDR:                         02:BA:3A:FE:45:68
GENERAL.MTU:                            1500
GENERAL.STATE:                          30 (disconnected)
GENERAL.CONNECTION:                     --
GENERAL.CON-PATH:                       --

GENERAL.DEVICE:                         p2p-dev-wlan0
GENERAL.TYPE:                           wifi-p2p
GENERAL.HWADDR:                         (unknown)
GENERAL.MTU:                            0
GENERAL.STATE:                          30 (disconnected)
GENERAL.CONNECTION:                     --
GENERAL.CON-PATH:                       --

GENERAL.DEVICE:                         quectelqmi_0
GENERAL.TYPE:                           gsm
GENERAL.HWADDR:                         (unknown)
GENERAL.MTU:                            0
GENERAL.STATE:                          20 (unavailable)
GENERAL.CONNECTION:                     --
GENERAL.CON-PATH:                       --

GENERAL.DEVICE:                         usb0
GENERAL.TYPE:                           ethernet
GENERAL.HWADDR:                         BA:00:FB:E9:5C:9C
GENERAL.MTU:                            1500
GENERAL.STATE:                          10 (unmanaged)
GENERAL.CONNECTION:                     --
GENERAL.CON-PATH:                       --
WIRED-PROPERTIES.CARRIER:               off
IP4.ADDRESS[1]:                         172.16.42.1/16
IP4.GATEWAY:                            --
IP4.ROUTE[1]:                           dst = 172.16.0.0/16, nh = 0.0.0.0, mt = 0
IP6.GATEWAY:                            --

GENERAL.DEVICE:                         lo
GENERAL.TYPE:                           loopback
GENERAL.HWADDR:                         00:00:00:00:00:00
GENERAL.MTU:                            65536
GENERAL.STATE:                          10 (unmanaged)
GENERAL.CONNECTION:                     --
GENERAL.CON-PATH:                       --
IP4.ADDRESS[1]:                         127.0.0.1/8
IP4.GATEWAY:                            --
IP6.ADDRESS[1]:                         ::1/128
IP6.GATEWAY:                            --

In my opinion, it is good practice to take a peek in the boot partition of a new device before booting it up.

pine64-pinephone:~$ ls -lah /boot

total 44M
drwxr-xr-x    3 root     root        1.0K Jan 10  2020 .
drwxr-xr-x   21 root     root        4.0K Jan 10  2020 ..
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root         919 Jan  3  2020 boot.scr
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        4.4M Jan 10  2020 initramfs-postmarketos-allwinner
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        6.4M Jan 10  2020 initramfs-postmarketos-allwinner-extra
drwx------    2 root     root       12.0K Jan 10  2020 lost+found
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       28.9K Jan 10  2020 sun50i-a64-pinephone.dtb
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       14.4M Jan 10  2020 uImage-postmarketos-allwinner
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root        4.4M Jan 10  2020 uInitrd-postmarketos-allwinner
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       14.4M Dec  7  2019 vmlinuz-postmarketos-allwinner
pine64-pinephone:~$

I am not very knowledgeable about u-boot yet, but I took a look at the u-boot boot.scr and it seems straight forward.

The last thing I wanted to see was a list of all user accounts.

pine64-pinephone:~$ cut -d: -f1 /etc/passwd

root
bin
daemon
adm
lp
sync
shutdown
halt
mail
news
uucp
operator
man
postmaster
cron
ftp
sshd
at
squid
xfs
games
cyrus
vpopmail
ntp
smmsp
guest
nobody
demo
chrony
messagebus
polkitd
pulse
lightdm

I wonder if the guest user is needed for automatically loading into factory test? I might look into that another day. If you are going to leave the factory test program loaded for any length of time, then you should change the password for the demo user. Finally, if you install a newer release of factory test, then you will need to re-apply each of the changes that you have made.

Ending the Serial Terminal session

When you have finished your fun poking around in the factory install of postmarketOS, power-off your device, kill the /dev/ttyUSB0/ buffer and unplug the serial console cable.

pine64-pinephone:~$ sudo poweroff

pine64-pinephone:~$  * WARNING: clock skew detected!
 * Stopping local ... [ ok ]
 * Deactivating swap file ... [ ok ]
 * Stopping oFono ... [ ok ]
 * Stopping Display Manager ... [ ok ]
 * Disabling EG25 WWAN module ... * Stopping chronyd ... [ ok ]
 * Stopping networkmanager ... [ ok ]
 * Stopping RNG Daemon ... [ ok ]
 * Stopping System Message Bus ... [ ok ]
 * Stopping busybox syslog ... [ ok ]
 * Unmounting loop devices
 * Unmounting filesystems
 *   Unmounting /run/user/10000 ... [ ok ]
 *   Unmounting /boot ... [ ok ]
 * Saving the shutdown time ... [ ok ]
 * Setting hardware clock using the system clock [UTC] ... [ ok ]
 * Stopping udev ... [ ok ]
 * Terminating remaining processes ... [ ok ]
 * Killing remaining processes ... [ ok ]
 * Clock skew detected!
 * Saving dependency cache ... [ ok ]
 [ ok ]
 * Remounting remaining filesystems read-only ... *   Remounting / read only ... [ ok ]
 [ ok ]
The system is going down NOW!
Sent SIGTERM to all processes
Sent SIGKILL to all processes
Requesting system poweroff
[ 1036.519665] reboot: Power down

Conclusion

I am excited about trying the PinePhone compatible operating systems. It will be interesting, since I am going to need to find an operating system that is sufficient for every day use since my Nexus 6p is finally dead. I guess am one step closer now in de-googling my life.

You are done. The rest of the content below is linked from above.

Remove SSH key

I am not comfortable with someone else’s SSH key left on my device, even if it is a factory test program that I will likely be removing soon. What if the device connected to a nearby insecure WiFi while running the factory tests? It might be possible for a nefarious person or program to use the known SSH key to gain control of my phone. To be safe, I am going to remove the directory and the SSH key contained within. If I really want to connect to my phone via SSH while the factory test program is running, I can create myself a new private key and start sshd.

pine64-pinephone:~$ rm -rf .ssh

Shutdown sshd

As long as I have the factory test installed, I do not want the SSH daemon running as it poses an unnecessary risk. If, at some point in the future, I want to run sshd on my phone, I can do so with my own user and authorized SSH key.

pine64-pinephone:~$ sudo rc-service sshd stop

* Stopping sshd ...
 [ ok ]
pine64-pinephone:~$

pine64-pinephone:~$ sudo rc-update delete sshd

* service sshd removed from runlevel default

Change demo user password

pine64-pinephone:~$ passwd demo

Changing password for demo.
Current password:
New password:
Retype new password:
passwd: password updated successfully

Comments

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Thank you Kitteh!

I love my Pine Phone. I am currently working on setting up postmarketOS with Plasma Mobile and will write about that soon.

It is nice to hear that you share an appreciation for Emacs :-)

Trevor Wilson
01/04/2020

Sweet! Hope you enjoy! Also yay for emacs!

Kitteh
31/03/2020