[fedora-arm] Is it possible to boot Samsung Chromebook from USB 3 external hard disk?

[Richard W.M. Jones]

I've followed the instructions here:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM/F19/Remixes#Samsung_2012_Chromebook

twice, with a SD card and an external USB 3.0 hard disk.  To cut a
long story short, SD card works fine, but USB hard disk just beeps and
fails to boot.

The USB hard disk is brand new, from a reputable supplier, and works
on other machines.  It even works fine on the Chromebook once it has
been booted into ChromeOS.  Here is the partition table:

# cgpt show /dev/sda
       start        size    part  contents
           0           1          PMBR
           1           1          Pri GPT header
           2          32          Pri GPT table
        8192       49152       1  Label: "KERN-A"
                                  Type: ChromeOS kernel
                                  UUID: A72A42D4-C4C1-E64A-A85E-446375AB233C
                                  Attr: priority=15 tries=5 successful=1
       57344       49152       2  Label: "KERN-B"
                                  Type: ChromeOS kernel
                                  UUID: AF3C10D0-1A48-A343-B6E5-7B1B80331FA0
                                  Attr: priority=5 tries=1 successful=1
      106496      614400       3  Label: "BOOT"
                                  Type: 0FC63DAF-8483-4772-8E79-3D69D8477DE4
                                  UUID: 721969A8-F939-4A85-A530-2A7B950B26D4
      720896     1024000       4  Label: "SWAP"
                                  Type: 0657FD6D-A4AB-43C4-84E5-0933C84B4F4F
                                  UUID: 8B98A2A8-BE2C-4290-B8FA-813EB7E5819A
     1744896  1951759759       5  Label: "ROOTFS"
                                  Type: 0FC63DAF-8483-4772-8E79-3D69D8477DE4
                                  UUID: 6EA48ABF-DCB8-4DF1-B9EC-7B9CC0725B2D
  1953504655          32          Sec GPT table
  1953504687           1          Sec GPT header

I can't find any documentation that says that the Chromebook
definitively cannot boot from USB 3.0 or from external HDDs.  (Also it
doesn't work when the same disk is plugged into the USB 2 port).

Any ideas?  I'd really like to eliminate dodgy flash cards from
my life.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
virt-df lists disk usage of guests without needing to install any
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http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-df/