Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Even Easier Recovery: Create a Recovery Drive From Your Cr-48

I've covered creating a Cr-48 recovery drive from Windows in the past but even that can be a hassle when you're not in front of your computer. Why can't we create the recovery USB or SD Card from our Cr-48? Now you can, just follow these easy steps:
  1. If you're not already in Developer Mode, you need to flip the switch underneath your battery. See here for details, just follow steps 1-7.
  2. With your Cr-48 connected to WiFi or Ethernet, get to a shell prompt. There are two ways to do this:
    1. If you're having trouble even opening a web page on your Cr-48, you can press CTRL+ALT+=> (=> is the forward arrow just above the numbers 2 and 3 on the keyboard). This works before or after you login. Now login as the user "chronos". No password should be needed. If CTRL+ALT+=> doesn't do anything, make sure you're in developer mode (see step 1)
    2. If you're logged in, you can press CTRL+ALT+T and then type "shell". If it says shell isn't a valid command, make sure you're in developer mode (see step 1)
    You should now be at a shell prompt. Note that you do not and should not need to be root to continue, the script will manage that itself, you can remain as user chronos.
  3. Now you're ready to run the recovery drive creation script. This command is case-sensitive, make sure you get it exactly right. If you get an error along the lines of "site not found, make sure you have Internet connectivity on your Cr-48. To start the script, just type:

    cd; wget http://goo.gl/e3cdo; sudo sh e3cdo

  4. Once the roughly 320mb image downloads and unpacks, the script will show you USB and SD Card drives that the image can be written to. Any 2gb or larger drive will work and some 1gb drives work also, the script will warn you if a drive is to small. If you haven't plugged your drive in yet, plug it in and hit Enter to scan again. It may take 10-20 seconds for the drive to initialize so you may need to hit Enter a few times.
  5. To confirm that you definitely want to use the drive and that you understand all information on the drive will be lost, the script makes you type "YES" and "DoIt". Both are case-sensitive and that's "Do It" as in the Nike slogan, "Just..." Once that's done, the image will be written to the drive.
  6. Lastly, the script will ask if it should delete temp files. Unless you plan to create more recovery disks in the very near future, you should say yes here to free up 1.2gb on your drive.

22 comments:

  1. doesnt work for me. i get:

    cannot write to 'SDSTY' (Read-only file system).
    sh: Can't open SDSTY

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  2. Thanks, I was looking for someone with a Mac, to download the image...no luck in this neighborhood. Everything went as you described. But, I'm not sure if the temp file were actually erased. Oh well, the Cr-48 seems to be running up to speed so I'll assume that it was.

    Much thanks again.

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  3. @mark: sounds like you're running the script as root. Don't do that, run it as cronos. The script will grab root permissions when it needs to.

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  4. @Jay Lee, this sounds excellent! Thank you for the instructions. Having a small USB flash drive or SD card available for "in-the field" recovery will be SO handy! I'll definitely give this a try.

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  5. @jay: youre right, i was running it as root. no wonder it wasnt working. haha. thanks!

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  6. ummm, mine says

    : not found
    : not found
    SDSTY: 11: Syntax error: end of file unexpected (expecting "then")
    chronos@localhost $

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  7. @Lance: my bad, I was fixing a few issues with the script. Try it again, make sure you run the updated script command I just edited in to the post (e.g. e3cdo instead of SDSTY).

    Jay

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  8. Worked like a charm. Thanks!

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  9. Hey, I know this may sound a bit elementary, but I have music files on my windows machine and I want to put them on the CR-48. Does anybody know how?

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  10. How do I reset my Cr-48 from the flash drive now?

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  11. @LivingChains: power the Cr-48 off then use a paper clip to press the recovery button (located on the very bottom of the Cr-48, just below the rubber foot nearest to the VGA port). hold the recovery button in while powering the Cr-48 on. It will ask for your recovery drive which you can then insert and the recovery process will occur automatically from there on out.

    Jay

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  12. Jay, I know this meant for the Cr-48,
    But can this script be ran from Ubuntu too?
    Noobish question...I know, but this seems easier
    than Google's instructions for Ubuntu :)

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  13. Yes, it can be run from Ubuntu. I just did it!

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  14. Yep. Just ran it from one of my ubuntu desktop computers too (for a USB flash drive). worked great :)

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  15. Jay, have you updated the script to download 11.257.201?

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  16. @wár17 §: No update should be necessary, the script downloads a file from Google's servers:

    https://dl.google.com/dl/edgedl/chromeos/recovery/recovery.conf

    this file is updated by Google to point to the most recent recovery image version which is what the script will use.

    Jay

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  17. Jay, when the Cr-48 Chrome OS shell displays the list of recovery images available, the list is so long that the only ones that are visible by the time I need to enter the number are the number 6 and 7 which are both Acer. Is there a list somewhere of which versions are which in the 1-7 list? Thanks.

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  18. Well, that was just in the shell that can be opened before login. I tried opening the shell from the browser and maybe the font was smaller or something because the Cr-48 version was still visible at the very top of the screen. It's #5. Problem solved. For now. Until they add more hardware to the list. How can I go up to view the earlier part of the output?

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  19. Following the advice from the Cr-48 webpage, and the steps posted here, I still can't get the file to download to my 8gb flash drive. Or to my 32gb sd card. Or to a different 8gb flash drive.

    Files will download (295 mb I think), verify the files, unpack, and then I get the same error on all three drives "can't write to physical drive . . . "

    I tried flipping the dev switch under the battery, but after the 'scary screen' and the beeps, it just goes to the "chrome OS missing"

    This is incredibly frustrating. Does anyone have any suggestions?

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  20. - Does anyone know if this process works on the C7?
    - Does anyone know if I can run this process on a linux VM to produce a rescue card for a C7?

    My c7 was set up to run chrubuntum then all of a sudden refused to boot to it, instead trying to boot chromeos, now claims that partition is shot, and is refusing to run the recovery tool ("unexpected error") (which I'm guessing means "the chromeos partition isn't as big as I thought it would be.")

    Does anyone have any suggestions how I can recover my new, teeny, tiny, little boat-anchor?

    -Recovery that works
    -Restoring the unit to factory standard
    -Forcing it to boot from the chrubuntu partition
    -Forcing it to boot Knoppix from the sd card
    -ANY OTHER IDEAS?

    I'm at my wit's end here. Not that that isn't NORMAL but I'd like to get this thing working. =(

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