Critical error in installation instructions for Sony Xperia XA2

/e/OS Devices Sony
1

I am particularly concerned about the instruction for temporarily booting a custom recovery.

The instructions give:

  1. Temporarily flash a recovery on your device by typing:
 fastboot flash recovery <recovery_filename>.img

In my understanding this is the command to install twrp which can lead to serious problems with the eOS install.

This is from twrp’s website installation page for the XA2:

“WARNING: If you accidently flash TWRP to your device using fastboot instead of temporarily booting the image, you will need to download the latest factory image for your device and reflash the boot image.”

This is true, I know from bitter experience.

One command to temporarily boot twrp is:

fastboot boot <recovery_filename>.img

This will immediately boot twrp with the interface displayed on the device screen, good to go.

Another command to temporarily boot twrp is:

fastboot flash boot <recovery_filename>.img

This flashes twrp but the phone display remains in fastboot mode; black screen/blue led. Power off phone and manually boot into twrp recovery by holding power & volume down buttons until you feel 1 vibration.

Another thing I have noticed after numerous installations to this phone is that after the eOS installation zip has been sideloaded it is best to reboot into recovery first. This will boot the LineageOS recovery that comes with the installation. There are still be a few little problems to negotiate from this point on but it is consistently successful in my experience.

Rebooting system after sideloading on the other hand is reliably disastrous, don’t want to go there.

2 Likes
2

Thanks for pointing to the link on the TWRP site. We will update the documentation.

1 Like
3

Thank you @chrisrg for highlighting this.
This might explain why I had to reinstall a factory image with Emma during my installation of /e/OS (the other possibility is that, I made a mistake while following the procedure; being totally inexperienced with flashing roms and so on, and not actually understanding what I was doing, I might have made some other mistakes…)

4

I noticed you updated the docs for this but it has undone itself somehow! Back to what it was before.

5

Thanks for reporting this @chrisrg …will have that updated .

1 Like
6

Thanks @Manoj. From my standpoint as a relatively new user may I respectfully suggest that the command

fastboot boot <recovery_filename>.img

would be best? Simply because it immediately brings up the twrp gui on the phone. This would be easiest for first timers.

Obviously I understand there may be other reasons to use the flash command.

Just had another look at the docs wiki and the paragraph in question has duplicated itself! Good luck!

7

Sorry for reactivating an old thread…

Having just installed /e/ onto my new XA2 I found that it will not boot into recovery while the USB cable is installed. It is necessary to remove the USB and power on with Vol Down+Power as described.