CrOS can't / won't update

[DennisLfromGA]

We recently ran into a couple of users that have tried and failed to update their Chromebook, see below:

• Acer Spin 311 CP311-3H Wont Update - Chromebook Community
  https://support.google.com/chromebook/thread/124421382/acer-spin-311-cp311-3h-wont-update
  
  
• Added Note: Chrome OS Version is not changing on brand new Chromebook - Chromebook Community
  https://support.google.com/chromebook/thread/124366624/added-note-chrome-os-version-is-not-changing-on-brand-new-chromebook

Both of them are using an Acer Spin 311 which I think is just a coincidence but I can't be certain. They bought the Chromebook recently so it appears they may have set on the store shelves for quite some time and the CrOS versions are very old.

When they press 'Check for updates' "it acts like it runs through updating successfully but then version number remains the same." No error message or warning is displayed.

We've recommended they perform a full recovery to get them on the current stable version but an error message or warning would be really helpful in cases like these.

Maybe the file:///var/log/update_engine/ logs would shed some light on why it failed too but we haven't heard any reports of it.

I came across an old feature request, below:

• FR: Expose Chrome OS update errors to users when they check for updates [172224725] - Visible to Public - Issue Tracker
  https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/172224725

But it doesn't appear to address this issue.

Sorry for all the verbiage above but this finally leads to the question:

• Is there a certain milestone version or age cut-off where updates just won't work and the only remedy I to perform a full recovery?

If so, it would be good to know, even better, throwing an error or warning about updates not working and a recovery needed would be a very good thing to have.

Anyone with any knowledge of the inner workings of the update_engine please chime in.

Thanx,

DennyL

[david....@gmail.com]

I have experienced the inability to update several times over the years. I use Canary so I expect to run into things like this but what I experienced is an update from a very current version, not a very old version. My issues were reported and were, in fact, bugs. I would certainly have them report issues but if using the recovery to bring them current works, it may not be worth keeping on this. I still have my old Acer R13 and can use the recovery tool to roll it back to Chrome 79 and see if it will update. I will report back

[david....@gmail.com]

I did a recovery to ChromeOS 79. I took it out of Developer mode to make sure there was no advantage in that. When I ran Update, I got a "Your Chromebook is up to date" message. I will try later versions of the OS to see where it does start to update, but it does look like just doing the recovery is the correct way to fix the issue.

[david....@gmail.com]

[david....@gmail.com]

I did a recovery using 83, 85, 87, and 90 and still got the "Your Chromebook is up to date" message. I did not wait for the setup to complete. I just signed in and did a check. I will let the CB set for a while and see if it updates on its own or if I can run the update in a while.

[david....@gmail.com]

After the setup was completed, running Update did start. I will start back at 79 to see if letting it complete the setup does allow the CB to update.

[david....@gmail.com]

Well, I did let the CB complete its setup, where there is a notification that said setup complete. It sat for maybe 30 minutes after recovering and Update said up to date. I next tried recovering to 88, and let it sit for maybe an hour. It said Up to date. For the elm platform, there wasn't a downloadable image for 89, so I could not try that. At least for the Acer R13 (elm) it appears that the earliest version of ChromeOS that will automatically update is 90, which would be 2 or 3 behind depending on how you look at it. I will leave the R13 sit for a day or two and try again. I don't think it would be too difficult to imagine a lot of machines in retailers' stock being more than 3 versions behind. My Acer R13 is available as new on Amazon even though it came out in 2016.