Contents

  1. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
    1. Boot-related questions
      1. Mobian does not boot, it just shows a keyboard on a black screen
      2. I installed Mobian on SD card, and it does not boot up
      3. Why does Mobian boot without an SD card, but does not boot when I add my SD card?
      4. After boot, my Wi-Fi settings and logo are gone
      5. After boot I hear "click.. click.. click.. click." Is something broken?
    2. Application specific questions
      1. How to raise a context-menu with **mouse-dependant applications**? How to "right-click"?
    3. General Mobian questions
      1. How do I switch to Mobian Unstable?
      2. How do I install Flatpak
      3. Do I need to upgrade or dist-upgrade? Do I need to reflash new images regularly?
      4. I just upgraded Mobian and my PIN is not accepted in the lockscreen
      5. What applications can I use for "X"?
      6. How can i re-order the apps in the "favourites" part of the app drawer?
      7. I get a warning that "space is low on /boot"
      8. After a reboot, the LED stays green, the screen black and nothing happens! What can I do?
      9. What is F2FS?
      10. Can I use my phone as an reliable alarm clock?
      11. My GPS does not work
      12. Charge is slow (or phone discharge while plugged)
    4. Phone functions (calls, SMS) related questions
      1. Can I customize my ringtone?
      2. I cannot place/receive a call, or an SMS, why?
      3. Does muting the microphone during a call work?
      4. My phone rings when I am in a call and a second call comes in
      5. System Speaker Switches to PinePhone's Earpiece Speaker After a Call
      6. Does Mobian/PinePhone support VoLTE?
      7. Does Mobian support visual voicemail?
      8. How do I get phone calls to work?
      9. See also
    5. Hardware related questions
      1. Where can I find more information about the modem and how it is used?
    6. Contributing to Mobian
      1. Can I contribute to this wiki?
      2. How do I contribute an app or code to Mobian?
      3. Packaging for Mobian

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

A list of frequently encountered questions and problems that we can easily fix. Feel free to add and improve, but make sure it is actually a frequently asked question and not just a pet peeve of your favorite topic or app to keep this list navigatable. Many tips and customizations are also described in more detail on the tweaks page.

Mobian does not boot, it just shows a keyboard on a black screen

If you have used the installer and encrypted your disk, you need to enter your password here, in order to decrypt the disk and boot up the phone.

I installed Mobian on SD card, and it does not boot up

Don't laugh, but have you put the SD card in the correct slot and not the SIM card slot? See the illustration in the pine64 wiki which one is the correct slot. The difference is subtle and you would not be the first one to do that. Also, hardware has been destroyed by putting things into the wrong slot.

Why does Mobian boot without an SD card, but does not boot when I add my SD card?

The most common reason is that the SD card previously had a distribution or Jumpdrive flashed to it, and when it was wiped, the boot sector was not wiped. The device is trying to boot from the SD card still and failing.

Please wipe the boot sector on your SD card with the following command:

After boot, my Wi-Fi settings and logo are gone

1) Hardware kill switch on? 2) If you boot without battery or with an empty battery, the cell modem and Wi-Fi won't work as they are directly attached to the battery, so they will not work, even when you have power plugged in.

After boot I hear "click.. click.. click.. click." Is something broken?

This sound is normal and comes from the camera!

Application specific questions

How to raise a context-menu with **mouse-dependant applications**? How to "right-click"?

The “Menu” key will raise a context menu, as if right-clicking with a mouse. The “Menu” key is on the Squeekboard on-screen keyboard.

General Mobian questions

How do I switch to Mobian Unstable?

Mobian has an unstable distro, so you can test some of the more recent (but less tested) packages.

The easiest way you can switch to this repository is by changing the line bookworm (late 2023) to unstable in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mobian.list . This way, you will be getting all your Mobian packages from https://repo.mobian-project.org/ unstable main non-free-firmware instead of https://repo.mobian-project.org/ stable main non-free-firmware .

Alternatively, change to testing (slightly less risky) rather than unstable; or change to staging (more risky).

How do I install Flatpak

There are many apps available on Flatpak, an across distros app source, a few are optimized for mobile most are not. Follow the instructions above to enable unstable in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mobian.list and then if not already installed:

Then add the flatpak repo, if this is not added your searches will come up empty:

You can use the Flatpak website to browse for packages https://flathub.org/home

To install just flatpak install (app name)

Then follow the dialog and app you want will be installed with dependancies.

Some flatpak related commands

Do I need to upgrade or dist-upgrade? Do I need to reflash new images regularly?

Mobian comes with a set of preinstalled packages. When performing a **apt update && apt upgrade** as root (possibly prepended by gnome-session-inhibit to prevent your device from sleeping) these packages will be upgraded to the latest available versions from the Mobian and the Debian testing repositories. Usually, this is all that you need to do, in order to have a device equivalent to one flashed with the latest weekly image.

But apt upgrade is rather conservative and opts for safe changes only (which is exactly why it is used by default). The manual page states for upgrade: under no circumstances are currently installed packages removed, or packages not already installed retrieved and installed. However, sometimes a package might be replaced obsoleted, conflicts with another package, or new packages are pulled in. In this case "apt" will be "holding back" upgrades and not perform a complete upgrade. If apt tells you it has been holding something back, you need something stronger!

A more more daring, but sometimes necessary approach, is therefore to use **apt full-upgrade** or **apt dist-upgrade**, which is described as "the function of upgrade but will remove currently installed packages if this is needed to upgrade the system as a whole", intelligently handles changing dependencies. (And yes, using apt, it seems both these options are actually equivalent).

Whether this is something that you would be willing to use by default depends on your risk-aversion. You need to perform this in cases where new packages have been brought in, or conflicts with existing packages arise. However, it is recommended to never blindly "dist-upgrade" without inspecting what it would do. I can uninstall your phone, eat your lunch and your dessert too!

In rare cases, reflashing might be needed, but this is not the norm. In some cases, the default set of installed packages changed in the root image but would not be pulled in by mobian-meta packages (one example is gnome-weather) and these would not be auto-installed during upgrades. Another example is that apt usually does not touch or remove configuration files in /etc/. If default configuration options change and your old configuration files continue to hang around, this could cause a different behavior than a fresh install would provide.

It is always safe to perform

which will uninstall all automatically installed packages that are not required by other packages. (the purge option will also remove any configuration files of the packages being removed)

On a final note, you might see instructions using apt-get instead of apt. For all practical purposes described here, it does not matter which of these you use. apt is 4 letters less to type and apt-get only knows dist-upgrade not full-upgrade.

I just upgraded Mobian and my PIN is not accepted in the lockscreen

It is a known issue when upgrading from the version of Mobian shipped with ?PinePhone Community Edition. More information on this and other issue on the initial upgrade is in our blog post.

What applications can I use for "X"?

Check out the linuxphoneapps.org list of mobile-friendly apps.

Finally, you have all the power of Debian underneath! Any available package is just a sudo apt install XYZ away. See the Debian 12 (bookworm = stable, late 2023) list of mobile-friendly apps or the Debian 13 list (trixie = testing as of late 2023).

How can i re-order the apps in the "favourites" part of the app drawer?

Simplest way is by using the dconf editor

Then in dconf-editor go to " / sm / puri / phosh" and edit the "favourites" field. It's a bit tedious using the cursors of the terminal keyboard and copy/paste functions, but doable!

Once done, don't forget to click the " ^ " icon on top of the screen, to validate your modifications.

I get a warning that "space is low on /boot"

/boot is on its own partition and rather short on space. Generally try to keep only a single working kernel installed (ie uninstall linux-image-5.9-sunxi64 when you are on kernel 5.10). A kernel upgrade could fail with this error message :

Then make room on the /boot partition by removing the current initrd (careful after this step, as you will have a not-bootable device):

At last, upgrade the kernel :

Reboot, and remove the old kernel. In a terminal you can type (if 5.9 is your old kernel version):

After a reboot, the LED stays green, the screen black and nothing happens! What can I do?

Green LED means it is still at p-boot stage.

If a previous kernel installation partially failed, you can try using the previous kernel:

Then edit /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf to prioritize an older kernel, and reboot to try it.

What is F2FS?

The F2F2 filesystem (Arch wiki) is a filesystem that is supposed to be faster, support encryption and reduce the wear on the flash memory of the disk. Mobian has currently experimental support for it, however, the installer and images created are still using the ext4 file system. In due time we hope to offer F2FS for new installs, do try it in case you are building your own image.

Can I use my phone as an reliable alarm clock?

Sorry, not with the default installation. But, the Wake Mobile app has been used with good success for those in need; and the FLOSS modem firmware (e.g. version 0.7.2) has a modem robot that answers commands including "call me in x" ("x" is in seconds) and "wake me up [at/in] hh[:xx min]".

My GPS does not work

Charge is slow (or phone discharge while plugged)

By default Mobian won't suspend while plugged in, so if your phone consumes more than 500mA while running and your charger only provide 500mA (USB default from long time ago), you'll find your phone discharging instead of charging.

This can be changed from the "settings" menu, in power managment, in the auto-suspend section: set it to auto-suspend when plugged-in.

If the phone is connected to an usb dock and the "Power Supply" app does show a "Current limit" of 500mA or less even though the charger connected to the dock delivers more power then the problem might be that the used charger does not support USB Power Delivery. Many docks seem to expect an USB PD charger.

Can I customize my ringtone?

Yes, on Trixie-based installations, the ring tone can be easily changed using the "Mobile settings" app, section "Feedback".

I cannot place/receive a call, or an SMS, why?

Make sure you have activated the mobile network in the "settings" menu after you insert a SIM card. If you have the phone set to 4g only and all outgoing calls fail(and incoming) but SMS works try setting 2g,3g,4g (preferred).

Does muting the microphone during a call work?

Audio on the ?PinePhone is routed through hardware through the ADC on the A64 ASoC. The mute button in the telephone "calls" app relies on software mixing, rather than muting the ADC, which does not work. So expect embarassing situations to ensue when you "mute" your microphone during a call. It will still be on!!! (issue 248)

My phone rings when I am in a call and a second call comes in

Yes, we know. Fortunately, most phone providers can be configured to forward a second call to a user's mailbox, making this a little more bearable. In much of Europe this could work by dialing **67*OWNPHONENUMBER# (Androids even have a nice GUI for this call forwarding settings). See this wikipedia section and your operators help pages for more on this.

System Speaker Switches to PinePhone's Earpiece Speaker After a Call

Initiate a telephone call and set speakerphone mode, cancel call. This will usually switch the system back to using the external speaker, this bug has been observed when a headphone was used during a telephone call.

Does Mobian/PinePhone support VoLTE?

For most people, yes, and you need nothing to configure as this is handled by the modem black box. See the section What's working with Mobian

Does Mobian support visual voicemail?

A community member, kop316, has made great progress on VVM support. He made two apps, vvmd to support backend downloaded voicemails if your carrier, and a front end GUI, vvmplayer to display them. Both packages are in Debian Testing

On installing vvmd, you need to restart your phone or start vvmd with

You can also check the status of vvmd with:

A database of settings can be found here, and you can enter them in vvmplayer: https://gitlab.com/kop316/vvmd/-/wikis/Carrier-Database

Unfortunately, porting this to different carriers does not seem to be as simple as MMS, so if you want to help port it to new carriers (and test ones), please join us at: #opensourcemms:matrix.org (Matrix) or #opensourcemms on OFTC IRC

How do I get phone calls to work?

To trace what particular problem you have and either fix it yourself or post a bug report to Debian or upstream so that others can fix it, see Mobian/AudioPhoneCallsDebuggingHints.

See also

Where can I find more information about the modem and how it is used?

Contributing to Mobian

See Mobian/Contribute

Can I contribute to this wiki?

Yes, please! See Mobian/Contribute#How_can_I_edit_the_wiki.3F

How do I contribute an app or code to Mobian?

https://gitlab.com/mobian1/wiki/-/wikis/Developer's-Guide

Below are the main steps to get a package accepted but you should read the dev's guide linked above

Packaging for Mobian

Some packages are not suitable for Debian or are otherwise targeted to Mobian. In these instances, the software must still be packaged per Debian's guidelines. For the package to be accepted into Mobian, it must be reviewed/acked by one of the following:

One Debian Developer, or

Two Debian Maintainers, or

Four Mobian Maintainers.

The maintainer of the package should also be willing to maintain the package in line with Debian's releases. As Mobian aims to upstream all work into Debian, most packages should target Debian rather than the Mobian repositories.