2016-09-16, 15:33
(This post was last modified: 2016-09-16, 18:18 by RayTrace77.)
*Excuse the formatting of the text, I typed it in Notepad first.
So the scenario was this:
1.) Chromebox in a dual boot state with stock firmware
2.) Chromebox was set to boot LibreELEC immediatley, no 30s wait
3.) Chromebox had been restored using Googles Recovery Utility(it said it was successful) <------that is where the problems started
4.) ESC key's did not work on any keyboard to get to boot selection menu
5.) ChromeOS did not boot as it says the owner has disabled ChromeoS boot in developer mode"
6.) When it tried to boot the partition where LibreELEC was installed it just went to a blank screen, no keys worked, nothing.
7.) I didn't have another 1.8" SSD to try and use.
8.) It's been a few years since I've even touched the Chromebox to do any work on it.
I felt like I had pretty much hit a brick wall here, ESC key would not work to boot another device and I couldn't see anything else possible if ChromeOS itself didn't boot, I knew the keyboards we're working because if I pressed the recovery button next to the SD card and powered on, it took me to the recovery screen where the keyboard worked, also, when you see the developer screen and it says press Space bar to re-enable OS validation the Space bar key registered(the FORCE-DEV-SWITCH option had been enabled so of course it did not re-enable validation), this is before it handed over to SeaBIOS, I was reading a lot online to try and see if anyone else was in that situation but after a lot of looking I didn't find anything, there was 1 person but he had updated his SeaBIOS to fix the ESC key issue(using 1 of Matt's scripts),something I couldn't do as I couldn't boot the Chromebox into anything.
I read about people using Chromium to do all sorts of things, so I got Chromium, made a bootable USB stick using the Win32DiskImage maker but of course I was still stuck as I couldn't get the Chromebox to boot to USB, after a long time of searching I eventually came across a post on a forum(think it was some kind of dev forum for chromium) where someone said you can use Ctrl+U at the developer boot screen to tell it to boot USB, so I powered the Chromebox on, waited for it to show the developer screen, I only had about 2 seconds to press the keys I wanted before it handed over to SeaBIOS but I pressed Ctrl+U and it worked, there was no visual or audible confirmation, just straight after the developer screen, it starts to boot the USB and I was now in Chromium, dropped to a shell, found a place where I had R/W access(/media) and downloaded/ran Matt's E-Z Script, from there I was able to flash the coreboot firmware(took a few minutes), backing up my current one of course, and it then created a LibreELEC install media(usb stick), rebooted.
At this point I nearly fell of my seat, when I rebooted I forgot that the reason I was able to boot USB is because of the stock firmware's dev screen allowing me to press Ctrl+U, and I basically took that away, I didn't see any visible screen or onscreen initialization for coreboot, as soon as I powered the Chromebox on the fist screen I saw is the SeaBIOS screen, and the first time it rebooted from Chromium the ESC key did not work, luckily when I powered it off and on, the ESC did finally work and it let me select the USB LibreELEC install media, which then installed successfully, when that rebooted, it was finally up and running.
Notes:
1.) The Ctrl+U took a lot of searching to find, now I've searched specifially for it, I can find stuff on it, but when I was researching the issues I was having, I could hardly find anything, only 1 post in a forum that mentioned Ctrl+U.
2.) Before all of this, I could not find a single post or thread or anything about how to actually switch from a dual boot, to a single boot, I'm talking about a small guide, I'm sure that would have saved me this issue, I think the way you would do it now is, just boot of a USB Chromium/Ubuntu, go to a R/W'able location and download/run Matt's E-Z Script which will allow you to flash the coreboot firmware.
3.) In a few places it's mentioned that before you restore to factory "so be sure to reset them back to the 'ChromeOS + 30s default'", but I could not find anything that actually told me how to do it, on the same page further down it does mentioned that "The default OS and boot timeout are set using the 'Set Boot Options' feature of the EZ Setup Script" which I didn't see so that was my fault, at the same time I didn't know how to boot USB so I would have had to figure that out first.
4.) The very first time I pressed Ctrl+U, because there was no bootable USB stick I beleive it gave 2 beeps and 2 screen flashes at the developer screen, so I think there is audible and visual confirmation if it can't find anything to boot when you press Ctrl+U
5.) After booting Chromium, when dropping to a shell, the default login was just "root" and no password, I kept seeing everywhere saying username and password is chronos which did not work, I think the user did exist but I did not know the password for it.
6.) At the time I could not see anywhere that said if the coreboot firmware flash also updates SeaBIOS, which I did eventually find on the original kodi.wiki Chromebox page "http://kodi.wiki/view/chromebox", the answer is yes.
7.) I'm starting to see that the information I needed is out there but scattered in different locations, the Chromebox guide on kodi.wiki is comprehensive but I think it could do with some touch ups when it mentiones something you need/can do, for instance, under "2.3 Perform a Factory Reset", it says "so be sure to reset them back to the 'ChromeOS + 30s default'", that could do with a caption or something next to it that says something like "See 3.2 Dual Boot OS Selection for how to do this"
This isn't a rant or anything, just explaing what happened to me incase anyone else find's themselves in the same or similiar situation, maybe they can use something in the text above to help them out.
