hey!
i have a couple old hp chromebook 11 g6 ee (serial 3nu57ut#aba, board snappy) chromebooks that i’m trying to install linux mint onto, but I’m running into a few issues. I used mrchromebox’s firmware utill to install the uefi firmware onto them, and was able to boot into a linux mint drive i made with rufus (cinnamon). my issue now is that when I try to install linux mint onto the chromebook itself, the drive is not recognized, only the USB drive, and the loop device.
I’ve tried several times, to no avail.
any ideas?
thanks!
i am also unable to get the trackpad working, but am able to use a usb mouse. would anyone know where to point me for drivers?
does the eMMC device show in the UEFI Boot Menu list?
What version Mint?
Yes, the eMMC device shows.
I’m using the lmde 6 cinamon version of linux mint, downloaded today, used rufus to install.
When I try to select the “USB: SanDisk Ultra” it gets stuck on this page. I had to go through the boot manager’s “boot from file” to find the grubx64.efi file.
Sorry for splitting the post, I could only embed 1 image.
Here is the page the boot manager gets stuck on after selecting “USB: SanDisk Ultra”
sigh.
When writing a Linux ISO, you need to write it in dd/image mode, not ISO – as per the docs here.
Rufus is trying to unload the EFI NTFS driver and load it’s own, for who knows what fucking reason because it’s a Linux ISO and you don’t need NTFS. This is causing your hang.
No idea why Mint isn’t seeing the internal eMMC, check the dmesg log?
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Thank you! I will try this tomorrow, I wascjust treating it like a normal boot image.
Not sure about the internal storage, but thats likely do to the janky way I booted mint.
I remade the lmde drive in dd mode, and that allowed me to boot into grub/linux mint from the boot menu. Thank you!
I still have the issue of mint not recognizing the internal eMMC, the dmesg log can be found here: hp chromebook 11 g6 ee - dmesg - Pastebin.com
[ 2.702937] mmc1: Failed to request IRQ 39: -22
not sure why it’s failing though. Do other distros fail similarly?
Pop_OS! is what I use and recommend 
Will do.
Another question, yesterday I bricked a chromebook by accident in the firmware-util when it threw the error “Error running cmd: /usr/sbin/flashrom -p internal:boardmismatch=force --ifd -i bios -N -w coreboot_edk2-snappy-mrchromebox_20240615.rom >/dev/null 2>&1 -o /tmp/flashrom.log”
Today, two more chromebooks are doing the same. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong, as I was able to successfully get my first 2 chromebooks to download the bootloader without a problem. Only the last 3 have thrown me any issues.
the log file can be found at https://piplup7575.is-a.dev/temp/flashrom.log
any ideas?
I realized after trying lmde again and moving back to popos, the emmc device is listed as 0 gb, so using popos won’t work either. whoops.
how did it brick? According to the attached log, it failed to erase the first block it tried, so I don’t see how it would brick the device.
How are you disabling WP? Are you rebooting when the script prompts you to disable software WP?
The chromebook would not start when I shut it down and tried to turn it back on.
I unplugged the battery, and ran “sudo flashrom --wp-disable” and “sudo flashrom --wp-range 0,0”
I was unaware I needed to reboot to disable software WP, I was never prompted to.
Thanks!
JFC – why are you doing that?
disable battery, run script, script disables SW WP, prompts you to reboot
run script, flash firmware, power off, reconnect battery.
the instructions explicitly say not to run any flashrom commands manually – for good reason. If you don’t reboot after SW WP is disabled, there are still parts of the flash protected by another mechanism – which is why the erase is failing.
You can just restore the stock firmware via the script and reboot, then re-run/re-flash and it should be fine
How would I go about doing that?
I do not have the option to do so, should I use flashrom?
I accidentally turned off one of these chromebooks, and it will no longer turn on. Is there any way to recover this? It is emitting a low buzzing sound, and is flashing a white light at the charger.
Another one died because someone unpluged the power strip i was using 
Is there any way to unbrick these chromebooks in this state without a suzy-q cable?
A SuzyQ, which you can get on ebay, is the easiest solution. I don’t know what kind of flash chip SNAPPY uses or if it can be flashed using a chip clip
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It seems that, if I follow the instructions on the chrultrabook docs, and not the outdated instructions my org had on hand, then all of my problems go away.
Thank you! I will see if I can get my hands on a suzy-q cable, and will try to fix those chromebooks.
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