[Solved] Cannot install e/OS/ on FP6 : Win10 fails, Linuxmint won't detect the phone and the phone is stuck in fastboot!

Using /e/OS Setup
1

Hello everyone!

I tried to install e/OS/ manually on my FP6 using Windows 10, I do have Linuxmint but I thought using Win10 would be easier.

So I followed this guide to the letter:

https://doc.e.foundation/devices/FP6/install/#installing-eos

Everything went great until the chmod command near the end, where I got this error :

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I did what I was told but the phone just wouldnt boot when the battery was unplugged while the cable was plugged in.

Learned through a post that apparently Windows just gets errors like these and is kinda bad for installing e/OS/. So I rebooted my computer to Linuxmint (dual-boot pc), thought I wouldnt need to follow the whole tutorial again from the beginning so I just executed the chmod command again. It was stuck on “Looking for devices…”.

So I eventually installed platform-tools again on linux, tried to run the fastboot commands but I got an error about lacking udev permissions or something, I did not take notes and screenshots im sorry, but someone apparently fixed this issue by turning on their phone normally and allowing File Transfer for their computer. And I wish I could do that rn but now the phone is stuck in fastboot mode. I was kind of stuck so I went back to Win10 to try the chmod command again and got a different error! Which was :

INFO: You are using MinGW on Windows. 
INFO: Looking for connected device(s)... 

WARNING: No Fairphone 6 found in fastboot mode. 
WARNING: Make sure that a Fairphone 6 is connected. 

Do you want to look for a Fairphone 6 again? [(Y)es/(n)o]:

So now its not even detected anymore… Great. Fortunately enough, platform-tools still detects it when I run fastboot devices in Win10…

So, what should I do to install e/OS/ or at least fix my phone? I feel stuck, I don’t know what to do anymore and it’s giving me a headache…

Should I use the recovery mode in the fastboot menu? Should I “fastboot flashing lock_critical” in platform-tools to get out the fastboot loop, give permissions to my linux system then retry everything through linux? Or maybe there’s a solution in Win10? Are there commands I could use in platform-tools to get me out of this?

I really hope I didnt break the phone, I won’t be able to afford another one… Anyway, help would be greatly appreciated

Thank you for reading all that, have a nice day!

2

Your Linux error pointed you to https://developer.android.com/studio/run/device.

Please follow that advice to run two commands found under the heading

Ubuntu Linux : Set up the following:

sudo usermod -aG plugdev $LOGNAME

apt-get install android-sdk-platform-tools-common

Secondly

On Windows you may have had

  • a driver error – missing Fastboot drivers, [Solved] Windows does not see my phone in Fastboot mode and / or
  • a problem that the USB cable or USB ports which could not handle the data transfer demanded by the script from “Aborting now” in your image.
  • Perhaps look at the whole USB chain. It has been reported that certain USB will not carry fastboot commands or complex fastboot commands. You will need a good quality (full capacity) data cable, so not a thin, skinny cable.
    Avoid USB hubs including any USB hub that might be hidden in the PC / laptop.
    Avoid a USB-C to USB-C cable as it may be provisioned through a hidden hub.
    For predictably good results check (if necessary with a manual) that you are connecting to a USB-2 port soldered to the motherboard.
  • You are using MinGW on Windows has cropped up in errors before.
  • Please note these recommendations for latest platform-tools Android Debug Bridge (adb) | /e/OS documentation
3

Neither should be done without good reason.

The bootloop is totally understandable due to the script failing half way though. Neither system nor recovery will boot but your phone is fine all the time you have working Fastboot mode.

4

I have installed e os couple times on Oneplus devices and had the same problems. Once it was due to non working USB-cable, and other time it got solved by just running “sudo apt install adb fastboot” command.

5

I ran into the exact same issue yesterday with the Easy Installer on Windows 10 getting stuck during the process. Here is how I got it working completely:

1. Windows 10 Fastboot Driver Check Windows 10 often fails to automatically recognize the phone once it switches from normal ADB mode into Fastboot mode.

  • Open Device Manageron Windows while the phone is in Fastboot mode.

  • If you see an error icon or “Android” under Other devices, Windows is missing the bootloader driver.

  • Manually update the driver and select Android Device → Android Bootloader Interface (using the standard Google USB driver package if needed).

2. Reset to Clean Stock Firmware If the installer previously failed or left the partitions/slots in an inconsistent state, the Easy Installer won’t proceed properly.

  • Download the official Fairphone factory package (stock ROM) for your model from the Fairphone support page.

  • Boot the phone into Fastboot mode, open a command prompt in the extracted folder, and run the factory script (flash_fp6_factory.bat / official stock script).

  • Let the phone cleanly boot back into stock Fairphone OS and complete the initial setup once.

3. Re-run Easy Installer Once the phone is back on clean stock software and Windows properly recognizes the Fastboot interface in Device Manager:

  • Enable USB Debugging again.

  • Run the Easy Installer from scratch.

After doing a full stock refresh first, the Easy Installer picked up the device without any errors and finished the /e/OS installation.

I hope this helps :crossed_fingers:t2:

6

Okay, thank you all for your help, unfortunately, I was not able to solve the issue.
I realized it’s probably due to a faulty cable, its definitely able to transfer data, the only thing is, at a certain angle, the cable disconnects, and it’s probably what happened during the installation process : I probably grabbed the phone to check on it, it disconnected, the installation process failed and i did not realize it, that’s probably what happened…

So to fix this, I tried all of your solutions, first I tried on Windows, then Linux. Here’s how it went (Linux first since I want to continue on the Linux route because it just has been working better than Windows so far) :

Linux:

TL;DR : Phone is detected kinda? Tried installing e/OS/ and now it’s stuck at Sending sparse 'super' 2/4 (726528 KB)

I followed the commands aibd told me to type in (sudo usermod -aG plugdev $LOGNAME) and it doesnt seem like the first command is working, idk, not sure, it just did not output anything. Then I typed in the second command (apt-get install android-sdk-platform-tools-common), asked me “Are you root” so I retried by adding “sudo” at the beginning of the command and it installed the thing successfully. Follow Ahappo’s advice and downloaded adb fastboot through the terminal. Well, I already had it so it didnt change anything except now i dont have to specify the path to fastboot to use fastboot commands so thats convenient. And now, “fastboot devices” detects the phone but “adb devices” does not.

Tried to install e/OS/ again, it kinda worked at first then I got stuck on this and been stuck there for 45min already but I don’t dare to close the terminal and cancel the operation, I dont wanna risk damaging the phone further :

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What should I do? Should I close the terminal and cancel this and try again or sth?

I am STILL stuck on the terminal as of when I’m writing this post and I probably won’t do anything until I get a reply from you guys…

Windows :

TL;DR : Tried on 3 different computers they all recognized the device partially and did not let me install newer drivers.

aibd told me to check the recommendations for adb which were to be careful about the version of adb I’m using. I ran “adb version” in cmd and got this output :

Android Debug Bridge version 1.0.41 
Version 37.0.1-15733141 
Installed as C:\fp6\platform-tools\adb.exe 
Running on Windows 10.0.18363

So I think adb is up to date. Tried to install e/OS/ again through Git Bash and got this error below

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Tried to update the drivers, I think windows did find drivers automatically but it did not change anything so I tried installing them manually. There I realized that all the options were greyed out and the latest drivers were from 2016…

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Tried again on another computer, this time on Win11 latest version.

On my other computer, fastboot won’t detect the phone, but the Device Manager will detect it as “Android”. It wont update the drivers automatically and if i try to update manually with the drivers i downloaded here : https://developer.android.com/studio/run/win-usb , then it jsut tells me “Windows was unable to install your Android : Windows could not find drivers for your device. […]”. No optionnal updates, no updates available, nothing. Tried Git bash on this computer, did not detect the phone.

7

Should I close the terminal and try that solution? [Guide] Fairphone 4 stuck in Fastboot after /e/OS install — Full Fix - Guides - Fairphone Community Forum

8

Do nothing without a new cable.

9

oh yeah forgot to mention but I’m using another cable rn that’s more reliable dw

10

Stop the terminal activity with Ctrl + C.

If you can successfully get back to Fastboot mode you could try again. You are stuck at flashing a large partition. It still points to USB problems. Cannot handle large / fast data transfer. Check all I said about USB ports soldered to the motherboard.

And / or double check: this is the environment with Fastboot version ~37 (??).

11

Uhhh, I hit Ctrl+C, unplugged the phone and now it doesnt respond anymore, I cant turn it off, the volume buttons dont do anything anymore, if I plug it back its not detected by fastboot anymore…

Edit : I managed to shut it down by pressing Power+VolUp for a while, then it restarted, showed me the Murena logo and told me that the bootloader is unlocked. Still stuck in fastboot though. and it’s now being detected by fastboot. Should I run the chmod command once again? So im sure everything is well installed

12

Surely nothing is well installed?

In light of

Edit. Please confirm both

fastboot --version

./fastboot --version

Please confirm this is the Linux environment and where exactly the terminal trace ended.

FYI. This is normal.

fastboot for Fastboot mode only,
adb for normal phone and recovery only.

13

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Linux Mint 22.3 - Cinnamon 64-bit

What do you mean by “Terminal trace”? Last things I did on the terminal were these commands and before that, last thing the terminal did was installing e/OS/, which stopped at “Sending sparse ‘super’ 2/4”

14

Thanks.

Note your Debian Fastboot is old v34, might account for fail at sparse, idk.

No such file or directory

So you are not in the required directory …

… OK I see “specify the path to fastboot” can you please try that, to check for a more recent version.

15

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Yeah ok, my manual install is more recent, guess I’ll use this one

16

I think it would be worth to run the script again if you are using a motherboard soldered USB port.

17

It worked!!! Omg thank you so much

Seems to be working well, now I’ll finish following the tutorial I mentionned in the beginning by locking the critical partition and the device and it should be good

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18

Maybe hold off locking the boot-loader until you read up on it, doesn’t offer that much advantage.

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