Ubuntu – How to use ubuntu-device-flash with the BQ Aquaris E4.5 and Aquaris E5

ubuntu-touch

The tool 'ubuntu-device-flash' can be used to update the software on an ubuntu phone manually. It can be used to change the device to a different 'channel' of updates and also perform a reset of the storage.

However, when I tried it with either the BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition or Aquaris E5 Ubuntu Edition, it didn't seem to work, for example:

ubuntu-device-flash touch --channel ubuntu-touch/stable/bq-aquaris.en --bootstrap

Would be expected to wipe the device to factory state. However, it does not seem to succeed:

2015/03/27 13:58:35 Expecting the device to be in the bootloader... waiting
2015/03/27 13:58:50 Device is |krillin|
2015/03/27 13:58:50 Flashing version 20 from ubuntu-touch/stable/bq-aquaris.en channel and server https://system-image.ubuntu.com to device krillin
Failed to enter Recovery

Best Answer

For production Ubuntu Phone devices, adb has been disabled in recovery, and this affects ubuntu-device-flash operation.

You must supply a recovery image with adb enabled, which ubuntu-device-flash will use temporarily while doing its work:

ubuntu-device-flash can then be supplied with the --recovery-image argument, eg:

ubuntu-device-flash touch --channel ubuntu-touch/stable/bq-aquaris.en --bootstrap --recovery-image path/to/downloaded/recovery.img

Note that when the command prompts you with:

Expecting the device to be in the bootloader... waiting

You can put a Aquaris E4.5 and Aquaris E5 in the 'bootloader' by holding down Power + Volume Up for a few seconds, releasing the Power button when the red LED lights as the machine reboots, and then selecting 'fastboot' from the device's boot menu.

unknown flag `recovery-image'

If you get this error, that means you are still using an older version of ubuntu-device-flash. Please install the latest version using the ppa

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:phablet-team/tools
sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get upgrade
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