# 2021-03-17 Status update

DevFeed: [2021-03-17 Status update](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/2021-03-17-status-update-34218.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://blog.mobian.org/posts/2021/03/17/update-2021-03-17/>)

Author: Mobian team

Published: 2021-03-17T00:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Mobian's Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/mobian-s-blog.md>)

Topics: [Mobile](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/mobile.md>), [Debian](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/debian.md>), [Kernel](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/kernel.md>), [Compression](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/compression.md>), [Encryption](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/encryption.md>), [configuration](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/configuration.md>)

Tags: [compression](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/compression.md>), [configuration](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/configuration.md>), [debian](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/debian.md>), [encryption](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/encryption.md>), [improvements](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/improvements.md>), [kernel](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/kernel.md>), [mobile](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/mobile.md>)

## AI overview

Mobian reports progress on the Community Edition PinePhone, including installer, package, kernel, and infrastructure improvements. The update also describes Debian-related screen-unlocking problems, /boot partition limits during encrypted-device upgrades, mitigations for initramfs size, and improvements to modem and hardware support.

## Source excerpt

In the past few months, a whole lot has happened for Mobian: we launched, in close cooperation with Pine64, the Mobian Community Edition PinePhone, which by now should have reached the hands of almost all who ordered it. We went through several iterations of our on-device installer and other strategic packages, such as the kernel, and we've been busy improving both our packages and infrastructure. Mobian CE and related challenges We're very grateful that Pine64 offered us the opportunity to put Mobian into the hands of PinePhone owners as the factory default OS for the last batch of "Community Edition" PinePhones. It drove us to work tirelessly in order to make Mobian a great out-of-the-box experience, and prompted us to work hard on the on-device installer and related improvements. Due to production constraints, the Mobian CE PinePhones shipped with version alpha2 of the installer, which was built on December 2nd, 2020. These phones started shipping more than 2 months later, and therefore couldn't benefit from several improvements we made in-between. While we did our best to make sure the initial upgrade went fine, we got bit by an issue related to a pam upgrade in upstream Debian which broke the screen unlocking, requiring special attention during the first system update. We also uncovered an issue where the /boot partition would quickly be filled due to a kernel version upgrade from 5.10 to 5.11 when full disk encryption was enabled. This is due to the unusually large initramfs file size as it must carry all software required for unlocking the device, including graphics drivers and libraries. We mitigated this issue by forcing zstd compression of the initramfs and improving the initramfs generation to only include required graphics drivers. However, major upgrades still require special attention as the /boot partition is still a bit small and could easily be filled. We increased the size of this partition on all the recently generated images, so if you want perma