Can I simulate legacy boot on an Acer C7

[DennisLfromGA]

I have the Acer C710-2847 (PARROT PLOVERCREST A-C 4619) Chromebook.

This Chromebook does not have SeaBIOS nor support legacy booting natively.

I've set: dev_boot_usb=1 & dev_boot_signed_only=0

    

If it's at all possible, I'd like to create a privately signed bootable USB stick or sd card that would look for or point to a 'live' OS on external media and subsequently, boot it - simulating legacy boot.

    

Once upon a time, in Chrome OS infancy around version 10 & 11, I would follow the Developers Guide and create my own builds for the Cr-48 but they were a full Chrome OS file system / partition table. I guess I'd need to build something similar to a Chrome OS kernel and root partition but with a script that would kick-off the 'live' OS. Problem is, I don't know exactly how to do that. 

For the moment, I'm just curious to know if this is possible.

Once that question's answered in the affirmative, I can look for existing solutions or perhaps work on building my own.

    

Thanx in advance for any help or guidance,

-DennisL

P.S. I'm not sure this is even feasible or rational and I may very well be off in the wrong direction on this, if so I apologize...

[Sonny Rao]

IIRC, Acer C710 (parrot) is very similar to Samsung 550 (lumpy) and
uses coreboot which loads uboot which loads the kernel. It's
certainly possible to load something else which is packaged up like
the kernel that could then simulate legacy boot, but I don't know if
anyone has tried it on that generation of Chrome devices, but I'm
pretty sure it's doable. You could probably re-use some existing work
on packaging other bootloaders using vbutil_kernel to appropriately
wrap them, though I don't know which one would be best.

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[DennisLfromGA]

Sonny,

It's certainly possible to load something else which is packaged up like 

the kernel that could then simulate legacy boot, but I don't know if 

anyone has tried it on that generation of Chrome devices, but I'm 

pretty sure it's doable.

Thanx for the encouraging words, I think it just might be worth pursuing.

[ I have an HP Chromebook 14 (falco) and I love the flexibility of it. ]

You could probably re-use some existing work 

on packaging other bootloaders using vbutil_kernel to appropriately 

wrap them, though I don't know which one would be best.

If you have any info., links, etc. to existing work it would be most welcome. 

I may have to dive back into the 'Chromium OS Developer Guide' and see if I can figure out a way to do this.

Unless of course someone here has done this or something similar and is willing to share (I hope, I hope, I hope ;).

Thanx again,

-DennisL

> email to chromium-os-discuss+unsub...@chromium.org.

[Sonny Rao]

On Mon, Dec 21, 2015 at 11:51 AM, DennisLfromGA
<denny.l...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Sonny,
>
>> It's certainly possible to load something else which is packaged up like
>>
>> the kernel that could then simulate legacy boot, but I don't know if
>>
>> anyone has tried it on that generation of Chrome devices, but I'm
>>
>> pretty sure it's doable.
>
>
> Thanx for the encouraging words, I think it just might be worth pursuing.
> [ I have an HP Chromebook 14 (falco) and I love the flexibility of it. ]
>
>> You could probably re-use some existing work
>>
>> on packaging other bootloaders using vbutil_kernel to appropriately
>>
>> wrap them, though I don't know which one would be best.
>
>
> If you have any info., links, etc. to existing work it would be most
> welcome.

try searching for "chromebook firmware seabios" there are some folks
with ROMs that work on these models.
You could either use them directly or try to develop a more
sophisticated method using vbutil_kernel to pack the firmware into
something that would get loaded by the original firmware
there's some information on how to use vbutil_kernel on the wiki:
https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/how-tos-and-troubleshooting/kernel-faq

>> > email to chromium-os-dis...@chromium.org.

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[DennisLfromGA]

Thanx again Sonny,

I have looked at John Lewis' ROM Download script but I'm not ready to dive in and flash my BIOS quite yet.

Both of the options he has for my Chromebook "remove the ability to run ChromeOS natively" which is not what I'm after.

I may try to build the kernel using the vbutil_kernel utility based on some of the ChrUbuntu scripts.

The root partition will be a lot trickier though, I guess I'll chroot into it and start trying to piece together someting that boots a grub menu or something.

I wish I knew a whole lot more about this; I would think someone has done this but I can't find anything about it if they have.

I'm hoping Mike Frysinger or another Googler with a ton of knowledge and experience will find this thread soon and offer some guidance... ;)

-DennisL

>> > email to chromium-os-discuss+unsub...@chromium.org.

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