Installed Linux Lite 3.4 on HP chromebook and now “gone”

[JanetBiggar]

I’m hoping another member may have had this issue. I installed LL 3.4 on an HP chromebook last August/September following various steps requiring enabling seabios and developer mode. I was successful and used it a bit then put it aside for 7 mths. As per normal each time it first boots up a screen shows saying something to the effect of chrome OS not being present, but all that is required is to press Ctrl + L then Linux comes up.

Well now this ctrl +L does nothing and I cannot get it to do anything other than go from the chrome OS screen saying hit the space bar to turn developer mode off and chrome OS is damaged insert USB with chrome OS.

I did this same routine with an acer chromebook and it has been working fine with no issues, the only difference being that the acer chromebook was used regularly over the past 7 mths.

Does anyone have an explanation nd solution?

This was not a school chromebook.

[JanetBiggar]

So I’ve done some research and apparently it’s a known problem with chrome books that if the battery dies the only OS available is the chrome OS (which is no longer on this chromebook  )

From wiki.archlinux site:
Warning: If you do not set the GBB flags then your system might become corrupted on empty battery, resetting dev_boot_usb dev_boot_legacy to their default values, forcing you to recover Chrome OS and wiping your Arch Linux installation on the internal storage, though it might be possible to modify Chrome OS recovery image to set these values again [7].
Warning: If you do not disable the write protection before setting the GBB flags you endanger wiping out the RW-LEGACY part of the firmware (i.e. SeaBIOS) and your system might not boot (should be recoverable with Chrome OS recovery media). Updated versions of set_gbb_flags.sh will not let you set the GBB flags without disabling the write protection.

I found this article on reddit which helped a lot:
https://www.reddit.com/r/chromeos/commen..._ran_flat/

So I will fiddle around with it soon as I have another chromebook (Acer) that I left in SA on which I performed the same steps and given that I did not go further to set seabios as the default I believe if I understand correctly I will return to the same issue with it.

I know have to find out how I can get a copy of the chrome OS...gratis ideally as it once existed on both these chromebooks.

[JanetBiggar]

Just an update - I managed to make a recovery USB using the chrome extension and simply typing in the series of letters and numbers that showed on the chrome screen. All went fine and I recovered the chrome OS then managed to get back into SeaBIOS and reloaded Linux lite.

So per the wiki article (setting SeaBIOS as default): https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Chr...by_default

I have decided to attempt this, setting SeaBIOS as default.

My main concern is that without doing this if I place this ex-chromebook with a youth and the battery drains or dies it will essentially be nonfunctional to the youth.  There is no way the youth could go through the steps of recovering chrome OS and reloading LL.

So I will post a new thread as I am wondering per the steps above, if once it set the SeaBIOS to default IF I need to “re-enable the hardware write protection”, I’m not sure if this is best to re-enable or if it will cause problems if I don’t re-enable it..?

I will go about attempting this today and it “seems” that I can replace the hardware write protection screw at any time...

Any and all comments welcome!