Samsung Chromebook XE303C12 will not boot from external storage.

[user030]

I have tried installing arch linux arm to a USB stick and an SD card but it never boots. After pressing CTRL-U I get a black screen for a few moments before a single low beep and being returned to the "OS verification is off" screen. I have also tried the official installation for arch linux arm with the same results. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[yourslef]

I ran into the same issue. After extensive digging around, at some point uboot may have lost the ability to see Linux kernel. This may be due to the newer kernel being larger than 8mb or something else.

Here's a forum thread detailing troubleshooting by some users.

https://archlinuxarm.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=15169

I found some links on custom boot loaders but I am not savvy enough to figure it out.

https://chromium.googlesource.com/playground/chromium-org-site/+/refs/heads/main/chromium-os/firmware-porting-guide/using-nv-u-boot-on-the-samsung-arm-chromebook.md

I was able to find a repository for old arch arm distros

http://tardis.tiny-vps.com/aarm/

Just change the curl call to that address for a tarball before Jan 20, 2021. The only other thing is to make sure that Pacman ignores kernel updates.

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/pacman-syu-kernel-update-solved-how-to-ignore-arch-kernel-upgrades

I was able to boot finally using an archived tarball. Haven't tested that I successfully blocked pacman yet.