I recently bought my second mnt device after daily driving the reform in university for a year, without any major bricks. Id like to update/ flash my pocket too Stable Debian. Since there are a decent amount of posts around those updating procedures i became a bit overwhelmed and would appriciate some advice and things to avoid (im on trixie/sid from 2024/12). Maybe there is someone here who has been in a similar situation.
Thank you for taking the time to read this 
Hello atlas, welcome to the forum!
That’d be the classic Reform (the big one) I assume? Are you running it with Debian Trixie as well or with Debian unstable from the MNT repositories?
If you just received the imx8mp Pocket Reform, is there a strong reason why you want to upgrade its old Debian unstable to Trixie instead of wiping it and performing a fresh installation of Trixie?
Yes the classic reform.
I just ran it on unstable Mnt because i didnt read that much about bricking compared to the pockets updates.
No sure i do not want to update it - i just wana make sure that there arent any quircks or no gos before making a fresh install. Sorry for the missleading expression.
I have not installed Trixie on an imx8mp Pocket Reform myself. I hope it works. If it does not, please contact me. Maybe @amospalla can give some input?
Hi, I used imx8mp with Debian stable but I upgraded to rk3588 and thus not using imx8mp anymore.
The only tricky thing (if any) at the time I used imx8mp with debian/stable was wireless, but I think that got solved at some point in the repositories. Can’t surely recall.
If you go this route I’m here to help in anything I can.
Do you have the ethernet adapter cable, or a USB based one just in case?
Alright thank you that makes me a bit less worried il try it tonight and report back
I got some wifi usb adapters here. I hope one of them works.
You can install a new image on the computer by:
reform-migrate. At this point you are actually running the O.S. that is being transfered to the eMMC/NVME, so, any change you did in point 3 is also transfered.You can check/modify whatever you want on the live O.S. from the microsd before you tranfer it.
I recommend using the Debian 13 Trixie + Backports image from reform.debian.net (thank you Josch), which includes newer versions for important software like kernel and reform-tools.
Update: The installer worked without any problems - it was very intuitive. After thinkering a bit, everything seems to be working.
The small hiccups i ran into where the usual suspects: like some screen flickering and the charger module V1 wich had to be bridged(already ordered a V2 one).
thank you @amospalla and @josch .
fyi Reform-check after the fresh install:
I:
uname -aoutput: Linux reform 7.1.7.1-mnt-reform-arm64 #1 SMP PREEMPT Debian 7.1.7-1~bpo13+1+reform20260818T001047Z+g1c aarch64 GNU/Linux
I: Version of linux-image-mnt-reform-arm64: 7.1.7-1~bpo13+1+reform20260818T001047Z+g1c430fca1
I: Version of reform-tools: 1.88-1~bpo13+1+reform20251209T125945Z~bpo13+1
I: Version of system image: System Image v5: 2026-08-10
I: Version of system controller firmware: 20250117
I: Latest version of system controller firmware: 20260819
I: Version of keyboard firmware: 20250117
W: No known path for mnt_pocket_reform_panel_version for MNT Pocket Reform with i.MX8MP Module – please consider contributing the output of: find /sys -name mnt_pocket_reform_panel_version
W: /sys/bus/spi/drivers/reform2_lpc/spi1.0/firmware does not exist – is the reform2_lpc module loaded?
W: Unable to retrieve bootloader version
I: probably booting via /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf (/boot/boot.scr also exists)
I: Mount source of /: /dev/nvme0n1p1 (SSD)
I: Mount source of /boot: /dev/mmcblk0p1 (SD-card)
I: the following files differ from how they are shipped by reform-tools (ignore /var/lib/alsa/asound.state):
??5??? /var/lib/alsa/asound.state
Update: The Screenflickering was just a firmware Software missmatch. Because i forgot to update my SC 
. So if u experience something simillar after getting an older model from mouser just do fwupdmgr refresh --force and fwupdmgr update (if ur bridging ur charging board like me add IgnorePower=true to /etc/fwupd/fwupd.conf and restart the service with systemctl restart fwupd.service).
This is good advice @atlas. I took the liberty to edit your post and mark some parts of it verbatim with backticks.
Thanks but Isnt it the fwupd.service wich has to be restarted to get it reloaded? Or is fwupd some kind of dependencie of upower.service ?
That is correct, thank you! If I remember correctly, a restart of the systemctl service isn’t even necessary after changing the config because fwupdmgr will read the config itself once it’s started. Maybe somebody can confirm?
I had some time today and couldnt find anything in the docs regarding this, so i monitored the fwupd daemon while updating, with strace on file opening events. No entries so im guessing the config gets cached on startup and restart after config change is necessary.
PS: The Pocket is doing perfect so far last thing i had to do was change the old dead liions from 2023. Batterylife is very promissing and way more then i expected.
Great to hear the details of how the older stock can be brought up to speed! Some of these are good deals now.