In Case you bump into one of these error messages while you try to flash the latest Google stock image for your NEXUS device – it indicates that your ADB / FASTBOOT binaries are to old.
Usually when such things happen and I don’t know the reason for it – I Google. Me myself running Ubuntu 16.04 things are a bit different to the usual Windows OS. So I found a ton of answers, telling me to install the Google Android SDK with fancy and long tutorials to install all a ton of things.
Thats actually not what I need. ADB and Fasboot also work just out of the box. Well – the Ubuntu repo is not yet updated – so the latest adb version you find there at the time of writing is:
adb version Android Debug Bridge version 1.0.32
To keep it short.
When you want to flash Android 7 on your mobile – adb version 1.0.32 is to old. Instead of installing this whole SDK thing from Google, you can also checkout the XDA Threat: [ADB+FASTBOOT Binaries] for OS X inclusive installer which was my solution with less than 10 clicks. Double click the install.sh, enter your password, and then apparently nothing happens. The terminal closed down.
Open your terminal and type
adb version
You will find: Android Debug Bridge version 1.0.36.
And now go ahead and flash your Android, bro.