It took me a bit to work through and combine what aTc said above with how I know that the process works from having done it a few times. I thought it might help the other Pyra prototype owners if I made a stepwise instructions set for installing the OS fresh to the eMMC card. If it doesn't, then the only time I wasted was my own.
Stepwise instructions to updating the eMMC on a Pyra Prototype using a Linux workstation.
1. Download file pyra-install.img.zip from
packages.pyra-handheld.com
2. Extract file pyra-install.img.
3. Open a root prompt in a terminal. #
4. Navigate to the folder where you have extracted the file pyra-install.img.
5. Insert an SD card in a reader into a USB drive on the workstation.
6. fdisk -l to list the disk devices on your Linux workstation. In my case the target SD card in a USB reader is /dev/sdj.
MAKE SURE YOU GET THIS RIGHT! The next step could overwrite your main OS on the workstation if you get the wrong device!
7. dd if=./pyra-install.img of=/dev/sdj bs=1M; sync Wait for the sync to complete and return to the # prompt.
8. Open a file manager. If you see a drive called PYRAINSTALL, tell the file manager to eject this. When told that it is safe to do so, remove the media from the workstation.
9. Power down your Pyra. Remove ALL media from the SD slots.
10. Insert this newly created SD card into the Pyra.
11. Power on the Pyra. Wait. Eventually you will come to a prompt to press any key to power down the Pyra. Touch the space button. Pyra powers down.
12. Remove the install media from the Pyra.
13. Power on the Pyra. It should now boot from the freshly installed OS on the eMMC.
14. At the Welcome! prompt, answer Start now.
15. Calibrate Touchscreen? Yes.
16. It skips the actual touchscreen calibration and hops to a box prompting to Please enter your full name and fills it with +++++++++++ characters. Quickly click the cursor into this and hit backspace once to 'catch it'. It is filling at around 60 characters a second. Use/hold backspace then delete to get rid of this +++++++ filler.
17. Enter your name. I use 'Grench'.
18. Please choose a short username. I use 'grench'.
19. Please choose a new password. Click on the empty box and enter your preferred password. Click OK.
20. Confirm your new password. Type in the same password as on 19. Click OK.
21. Please choose a name for your Pyra. I use 'Marble'. Click OK.
22. Enable Firewall? I pick yes to this. There is a bit of a wait after entering this - give it a minute or three.
23. Geographic area: Drop down box. I pick "America" Next.
24. Time zone: This is by city, not actual time zones. It does not have to be YOUR city, just one within your time zone. For US Central Time, I choose "Chicago". Next.
25. Locales to be generated: This one has been a tripping point for some prototype owners. You do not need or want them all. By default, "de_DE_UTF-8 UTF-8" and, "en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8" and, "nl_NL_UTF-8 UTF-8" are all pre-selected. Unless you know that your language requires character sets outside of German, US English or Dutch Netherlands, you can just leave these as defaults and select "Next". IF you select 'all', then it could take 20-30 minutes before you get to step 30. Most of us should just select, Next.
26. Default locale for the system environment: This defaults to en_US.UTF-8. Since that is my locale, I simply leave it and select, Next. This takes about a half minute per locale that you selected. By default about a minute and a half. Be patient.
27. Done! select OK. Your Pyra will shut down. Give it a good 30 seconds after it shuts down.
28. Power on.
29. Your user name should be pre-selected. Enter your password. Select Log In.
30. Connect to WiFi. Hover the mouse pointer over the icon of one screen behind the other - should be just to the left of the partially blue battery icon. Left click on this icon by moving the right nub to the left with the cursor over the icon. Your local wireless network should be in the list. Hover over it and left click on it. It will prompt for a password if one is configured on the router. Left click 'Connect'.
Now to take care of getting the 'extras' and uboot set up right.
31. On the Pyra, right click on the desktop, left click on "Open in Terminal". This should open a command line terminal. In my case the prompt is grench@Marble:~/Dexktop$.
32. Type in the command, sudo su This will prompt for a sudo password for your user name. It is the same password you used to login. Enter it, it will be masked. No characters or *s will appear on the screen, but characters will be registered.
33. You should now have a prompt that on my screen looks like: root@Marble:/home/grench/Desktop# Yours will vary from that.
34. Type in the command: apt install pyra-meta-extra This was not needed on mine though it is in the instructions above. My install was already at the newest version (0.23).
35. Type in the command: # /usr/share/pyra/scripts/pyra-install-uboot.sh /usr/share/pyra/u-boot/pyra-u-boot-4g/ /dev/mmcblk0
For the above, you might want to open a browser window so that you can copy/paste if you don't want to type the whole thing in. Accuracy is important on this.
Should look like:
Installing U-boot...
0+1 records in
0+1 records out
65548 bytes (66 kB, 64KiB) copied, 0.00262484 s, 25.0 MB/s
0+1 records in
0+1 records out
342912 bytes (343 kmB, 335 KiB) copied, 0.0134252 s, 25.5 MB/s
Done.
36. Exit the command line window. # exit $ exit
37. Left nub mouse to the Pyra icon in the lower left corner of the screen. Right nub left to select, Shut Down, confirm Shut Down.
38. Wait at least 30 seconds to make sure the exit scripts have completed.
All done. Should be ready to go.