How to upgrade the Flame from FxOS 1.x to 2.x

I found the Firefox OS wiki to be a little confusing - maybe too much explanation for what seems to be a simple task, but a buddy of mine walked me through the upgrade process and I distilled it down to this:

Upgrading to latest Stable FxOS on the Flame

NOTE: You might want to turn off your passcode. You must unlock your phone every time you want to use the developer tools.

Put your phone into developer mode

FxOS 1.4+

Settings
  => Device Information
    => More Information
      => Developer
        ✓ Developer Menu

Settings
  => Developer
    => Debugging via USB
      ✓ ADB and Devtools
    => Developer HUD
      ✓ Remote Debugging

The menus for 1.2 and 1.3 are somewhat different, but largely similar, so you shouldn't have much trouble finding them.

If you're interested, check out Mozilla's devolper settings documentation

Download the update and the backup / restore script

Nothing too fancy here.

mkdir -p ~/my-fxos-upgrade
pushd ~/my-fxos-upgrade

Head over to the developer guide and find the latest 2.x firmware. It'll probably be something like v188.zip.

• https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox_OS/Developer_phone_guide/Flame/Updating_your_Flame

curl -fsSL http://cds.w5v8t3u9.hwcdn.net/v188.zip \
  -o v188.zip

You'll download that and the backup script and restore scripts (as described at https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox_OS/Developer_phone_guide/Flame#Backing_up_and_restoring_your_Flame_data)

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Mozilla-TWQA/B2G-flash-tool/master/backup_restore_profile.sh \
  -o backup_restore_profile.sh

Install Android SDK (adb etc)

If you don't already have the android SDK installed, you can get it from https://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/index.html

Since the 5.0 update the website has been revamped to be much more confusing to navigate and adb has been removed from the primary SDK download (!?!?)

I think what you have to do is download the SDK only version and then run

unzip android-sdk_r24.0.2-macosx.zip
./android-sdk-macosx/tools/android

I'm pretty sure you can deselect everything except platform tools.

After you install try running:

sudo rsync -a ./android-sdk-macosx/platform-tools/adb /usr/local/bin/
adb devices

If it runs at all, it's probably installed just fine.

NOTE: You might want to turn off your passcode. You must unlock your phone every time you want to use the developer tools.

Backup and Upgrade

Now the easy part:

Again, double check that your phone is connected

./android-sdk-macosx/platform-tools/adb devices

NOTE: You might want to turn off your passcode. You must unlock your phone every time you want to use the developer tools.

if you don't see your phone try unplugging the USB cable and plugging it back in, or even restarting the phone.

# backup the phone to the current directory (~/my-fxos-upgrade)
bash ./backup_restore_profile.sh -b


unzip v188.zip
pushd 188

sudo bash flash.bat

Then you wait for 1 or 2 minutes (it's surprisingly quick).

Don't spend too much time setting it up once it reboots, you'll be restoring the backup momentarily.

Once the phone is booted you need to go back in and turn on the developer mode.

System
  => Device Information
    => More information
      ✓ Developer Menu

System
  => Developer
    ✓ Remote Debugging

Now unplug and replug the USB cable and restore the phone.

./backup_restore_profile.sh -r

If you have any trouble restoring, just unplug and replug the phone, maybe reboot it. Make sure that it is unlocked.

NOTE: You might want to turn off your passcode. You must unlock your phone every time you want to use the developer tools.

Upgrading to the nightly channel

You should first upgrade to the latest stable using the instructions above.

Then you can follow the official guide from there.

By AJ ONeal


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