Installing on internal mmc Asus Flip C100P 4G

[psychoacoustic]

Hello all,

I wonder if someone can help me trying to install Arch on the internal eMMC of my Asus Flip (C100P, 4G RAM). I have Arch running quite nicely off a SD card*. My attempts to repeat the same on the internal memory have so far failed (beeps and getting a note that ChromeOS is damaged). Anyone here having done this successfully?

Note that it is quite likely that the eMMC is damaged: I get write errors trying to write to the low blocks, the kernel claims the primary GPT is damaged (using the secondary instead).

Would installing libreboot help? So far I have been unable to compile it for the C100P and I am reluctant to flash anything unless I am 100% sure it'll work.

How about flashing Uboot (which is apparently a thing for Veyron Minnie now)?

(I find the stock loader quite unhelpful for debugging boot issues. That is probably by design.)

Thanks,
Joe
(*) Let's not talk about X right now, OK?

[summers]

Guess the question is can you access all the eMMC in RW mode? many of these machines have a "screw" that needs to be loosened, this opens a contact, which enables the write to the eMMC. Let me find a link:

https://libreboot.org/docs/hardware/c201.html#flash-chip-write-protection-the-screw

[psychoacoustic]

Hi,
yeah, I thought the same at first, and removed the screw. No luck unfortunately, I think it only protects the flash (by physically grounding the write line or something to that effect).

So either the eMMC is damaged or the firmware protects the first couple of blocks. If it's the former, I would expect it to read all 0xFF instead of a (possibly corrupted) partition table / GPT table. If it's the latter, I have no idea how that works - the kernel should have full access to the hardware, there's no TPM like in x86.

Anyways, that's why I would like to hear from anyone who has maybe managed to install libreboot or UBoot on the flash chip; perhaps I could also convince that to ignore the first few kB of the flash...

On reflection, I probably put this into the wrong forum ; after browsing others, I think I'll post it again in Hardware / ARMv7 Devices / Community Supported

[summers]

what does $this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', 'sudo mtdinfo /dev/mtd0') say? When done to on all the /dev/mtd* ?

and do you have any bad blocks? Think it shows in dmesg IIRC (can't find any one my farm) ...

Oh yes, also depends on how your machine boots. Usually its looking for something, either a file, or a set place in the eMMC. If its a set place, then you need to write to that place ....

So try and understand how your CPU boots, you can usually find it on www somewhere ...