Panic: did not find any boot partition when installing on Chromebook

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#1

Hi there all! I’m trying to install R4 on an Asus C200M, an intel cpu based Chromebook from 2014. In order to replace ChromeOS, I cracked the machine open, removed the BIOS write protect screw and replaced the OEM BIOS with SeaBIOS. Originally, I flashed Beta1r4 onto an SD card (using balena etcher) and tried booting from a USB card reader. The boot process goes as far as the drive (4th) icon and then drops to KDL and gives the message PANIC: did not find any boot partitions!

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(oops… I have to break this up because I’m a new user…)

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#2

A little research turns up several posts and bug reports which suggest that certain USB 3.0 host controllers cause this problem and that the work around is to try USB 2.0. I don’t have a lot of information on the hardware on this laptop but I tried both the blue (3.0) and white (2.0) USB ports and still had the same issue. I also tried to boot directly from the SD slot and had the same result. Finally, I got a second USB 2.0 drive and tried booting from that and also got the same issue. For grins, I tried ‘continue’ in KDL and that failed. I ran ‘bt’ and got the following output:

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(on to part 3)

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#3

Interestingly, when I tried ‘usb_process_transfer’ followed by ‘continue’ the remaining three icons loaded and the machine hung. As you can see here:

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Given all of the above, I’m fairly sure that the USB host controller is to blame here. Having the same issue when I booted from the SD slot threw me a bit but I imagine that internally, it’s another USB device.

I’m not super concerned about getting Haiku running on this machine, after all, it was rescued from the trash. ;-D But I would like to do whatever I can to help take care of this bug.

Thanks!

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#4

I doubt usb_process_transfer has any effect if there are no USB keyboards being used in the KDL session. The continue likely sufficed.

Try enabling the “fail-safe video mode” option in the bootloader, see if that fixes the hang on the rocket.

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#5

https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/bootloader.html

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#6

–Edit–
Only after I posted this did I figure out what you meant and how the continue process works. I’m sure you’re right. Sorry about not really understanding what was going on. Thanks for your patience!
–Edit–

Though the keyboard seems to work fine in the BIOS and KDL, I can’t access the boot menu even if I’m holding shift before I select the boot device in the BIOS. Is it possible that the keyboard is also on the same USB host controller?

Tomorrow, I’ll flash a BSD USB drive and see if I can get that to boot then I’ll be able to tell if there’s a hardware issue as well as getting a little bit more information about the hardware.

Thanks again!

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#7

I had the same problem on my Acer Chromebook CB 315 2H. No USB worked. After many tryings I gave up. Lubuntu works pretty good with that Laptop.
I use Haiku on my Asus Laptop and as well within Qubes OS (works pretty good and fast).

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#8

Maybe create a ticket to file a bug report?

#9

If it’s consistent that running usb_process_transfer allows you to boot the rest of the way, then that does mean something at least, and it’s possible I’m mistaken. So, more testing is required, I suppose.

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#10

Sorry I haven’t been able to get back to this for a bit. But, I finally tried to install FreeBSD on the machine as well. The upshot is that BSD also gets part of the way through the boot process and then can’t find the boot disk. Dropping me to a prompt and asking me to manually enter the drive, device path and parameters. I may try installing some flavor of Linux but honestly, I’ll probably write this machine off. I already installed Haiku on a Dell XPS 13 and it works beautifully (except for the stoopid Intel HDA) and I think number of people wanting to install Haiku on a Chromebook from 2014 is pretty small. Thanks so much for your help and patience!

#11

Just because I can’t leave well enough alone, I tried Manjaro with non-free drivers and it worked. But, the partition table was a crazy mess! I should have taken a picture of it but there were way more than 10 partitions on a 16gb EMMC drive. I know it’s probably not the issue, but I might try the install again now that the internal drive has been “fixed up”.

EDIT:
It didn’t work. :slight_smile: