Developer mode without power button? Ctrl-D does nothing in recovery mode.

[Daniel Barron]

I have an original 2013 Chromebook Pixel from Google IO itself - not retail. It's still in perfect working order. However, the power button has never worked. This is not a problem as I shut the lid and it turns off; open the lid and it turns on.

I want to install CloudReady, but I can't get it into developer mode because Ctrl D does nothing on the recovery screen.

To get it into recovery mode I let the battery go flat with the lid open. Wait long enough. Then insert the power while holding down Esc and F3/Refresh.

I have removed the read-only bios screw from inside.

When at the recovery screen, pressing Ctrl-D does nothing. No matter how long I press for.

Ctrl and D keys work because when logged in, it's the shortcut for a bookmark.

I have tried reflashing with the recovery tool. Made no difference. I have tried flashing non-chrome OS and it won't let me saying it's not Chrome OS.

What do I need to do to get it into developer mode or flash with CloudReady please?

[Mike Frysinger]

this is an interesting problem ... i'm not sure there's an easy answer.

if you used an old recovery image to install an old OS version, that should have a number of known root chain exploits, so maybe you could use those to jailbreak the device and get a root shell.

backing up a little bit, i think you'd want to crack the case to disable flash write protection.  then once you have root above, you could use /usr/share/vboot/bin/set_gbb_flags.sh to force dev mode flags in the firmware, then re-enable flash write protection (if you wanted).

-mike

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[Daniel Barron]

I had a look and was unable to find any root exploits I could download or use and any in the news were apparently complex to use. None linked to how to use the exploit - unlike many exploits for Linux or Windows for example.

I think my only bet is to somehow fix the power button.

[Mike Frysinger]

interesting list:

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/list?q=Type%3DBug-Security%20-is%3Aopen%20os%3Dchrome%20reporter%3Arory%40rorym.cnamara.com&can=1

-mike