An installation on some installation locations on some platforms, e.g. SPI on RK3399, eMMC on Pinebook Pro*, can be hard to recover from.

One method that could be used to make the installation/upgrade more robust is to:

• Break valid boot signature by nulling it on the target storage media
• Install most of the IBF; probably all of it but the signature
• Finish by writing the signature

This would mean that an incomplete install, e.g. stopped before the end, would still "brick" the computer, but at the same time, the computer would be easier to recover from. That is, an alternative boot source could be used, like an SD card.

* eMMC on Pinebook Pro is about as inconvenient as SPI Flash to recover from when an IBF install has gone wrong. Both requires disassembling the Pinebook Pro. The main difference is that for SPI Flash you may have to disassemble a bit further.