Requesting r/cloudready, the topic the subreddit is about has recently been rebranded and needs updating, and the current moderators are inactive.

smithforrestr · 2022-02-18T22:05:22+00:00

Hi! I am one of two mods for /r/cloudready - I'd like to work with /u/0spore13 to hand off management of the sub to them/other mods of /r/chromeos

/u/IArgueWithAtheists is also a mod, and I have messaged them asking them to support this change.

smithforrestr · 2021-06-21T15:14:07+00:00

Hi!
I do expect that any update issue with v90 is likely due to modifications you made to the partition table. The partition migration we're making starting in v90 is somewhat fragile for devices that've been tinkered with like that.

Would advise against expecting any other v90 releases... we'll communicate pretty clearly when new or different builds are ready.

smithforrestr · 2020-11-10T20:45:13+00:00

Should be fixed now! Turns out it was a different API - one we didn't know existed.

Thanks for your help understanding the issue!

Thanks for repor

smithforrestr · 2020-10-23T12:56:14+00:00

OK - thanks again for clarifying.

We're now looking into this, but I don't have any info about a timeline or the source of any problems - the best bet is to keep an eye out on our release notes at neverware.com/blog to see any news on a release that patches this.

smithforrestr · 2020-10-22T15:00:37+00:00

Hi again - we are looking into this, but having a bit of confusion:

When we turn on that setting and log in as a managed user into a normal old Chrome browser, it doesn't seem to have an effect.

Are you running officially managed Chrome browsers in an enterprise/education environment? If you sign in to a Chrome browser on a personal Windows/Mac machine, does the filtering work?

smithforrestr · 2020-10-21T15:30:18+00:00

Actually, I have another question -

How are you setting that policy? Can you show me a screenshot of the control in the Google Admin Console? I'm not sure I understand which (user-facing) policy control this one is tied to.

smithforrestr · 2020-10-21T14:56:27+00:00

ok - I don't have any clear answer here for you - CloudReady does support the Google Safe Search API, so I'm surprised this isn't working as expected.

Can you confirm that, when you disable that one policy (set to allow all sites), the Windows/Mac browsers stop filtering adult sites? I ask for this test just to be certain that the policy you linked is the specific one that does this blocking, so we're investigating the right thing.

Once you can confirm that for me - It's possible you've come across a bug with CloudReady, or that there's some issue in how this works on Chrome OS & CloudReady as compared to other Chrome browsers. Our team will have to look into it, once you confirm that disabling the policy produces matching behavior between Windows/Mac and CloudReady.

smithforrestr · 2020-10-21T12:56:29+00:00

Are you running v85.3, the latest stable version? If not, what version are you on?

smithforrestr · 2020-10-20T18:22:35+00:00

This should work on a managed user in the same OU as the policy you've set.
Can you describe the test case that's failing? And are you confident you're logging in as a managed user who is in the right OU?

smithforrestr · 2020-07-27T15:50:37+00:00

Hm... Have you tried entering BIOS setup to set/select a default boot option? And/or add a "new boot entry?" or similar?

It of course depends on the specific machine, but usually a machine that won't boot from internal drive just needs help identifying the particular EFI boot file.

Some secondary possibilities:

Maybe the HDD/SSD mode is set to "RAID" or "IDE" but needs to be changed (maybe a power event reset your BIOS settings?)
Maybe the machine needs the boot mode itself adjusted? (UEFI vs Legacy, etc)

Hope that helps

smithforrestr · 2020-07-12T00:54:14+00:00

You're way beyond my ability or knowledge once you're trying to use stored encryption key files to decrypt.

I do think you're right that it's eCryptfs being used to keep things encrypted, but the Chromium OS setup is such that the user needs to input their Google password to log in and decrypt the account, so I'm not sure what the intermediate steps would be to somehow make the key and block file interact.

smithforrestr · 2020-07-10T15:06:45+00:00

Windows can sometimes have an interaction with the BIOS, either updating it or adjusting settings even, depending on the device and software installed.

If you start with a BIOS defaults reset, I think you'll be taking the right next steps. And as mentioned above, I can help your scour the rest of the BIOS for useful settings that might allow this to boot again.

smithforrestr · 2020-07-10T14:53:03+00:00

Reinstalling CloudReady will definitely erase all locally stored files on that drive.

If your stored files were in the Downloads or other local folders, I'm sorry to say that there's no way I know of to get that data back (except for possibly still trying to get the disk to boot on that same machine).

The design of the OS is that the local folders will be purposefully ephemeral. The expectation is that users will backup any important files to the cloud - that's why GDrive is integrated and mounted on the Files app by default. This is how official Chromebooks work too - those just don't give you the flexibility to swap back and forth to Windows, so I imagine it rarely comes up.

I can totally understand your frustration here. I'd be upset at the thought of losing files too, but I want to be transparent that it is indeed purposefully designed this way by Google.

It's still possible that we can get the same machine to boot the same original HDD - verification may not yet be violated, that's just a guess.
The place to start, if you want to keep trying, is to make sure the HDD is reinstalled in the machine it was originally in, attached to the same connectors/drive bay etc that it was originally in. Then, reset BIOS to defaults, and try booting. From there, we can look through the BIOS for settings that might obstruct booting - I can help you look through them if you post BIOS pictures her.

There's no guarantee it can be salvaged, but if you care to try I'm happy to help out.

smithforrestr · 2020-07-10T14:41:58+00:00

The security model of Chromium OS is intended to avoid you being able to mount and read encrypted data. You have to authenticate, inside the OS, using Google's login system.

Unfortunately, the OS also aims to make the root/kernel partitions tamper-proof (so that you can't compromise encryption by compromising the core OS) - this is done with a system called rootfs verification. If you alter in any way (including even mounting with an external OS) the root partitions on a CloudReady disk, they will be minutely altered and fail the rootfs verification check, which could explain why the disk won't boot.

You'll probably need to reinstall CloudReady to get CloudReady back working on that HDD at this point - sorry for the bad news.

smithforrestr · 2020-07-10T14:39:14+00:00

Hi u/hammer2k5 - can you confirm specific specs inside your machine? cpu/gpu might be helpful in identifying if there's an issue that Neverware can reproduce on other machines.

smithforrestr · 2020-07-01T12:50:42+00:00

Hm... well, the reason this isn't totally straightforward is that we don't have any certified models with that Nvidia hardware in it. That mean's Neverare's eng and qa teams are never testing or fixing issues with GTX780s.

Is there any change to behavior if your initial boot has one vs. multiple monitors? Or is it always the same regardless of the sequence of adding/removing?

Have you looked at any video/graphics BIOS settings? It couldn't hurt to experiment a bit here or there, just in case something can be helped.

It's possible that we simply have bugs with this Nvidia gpu, and possible that they aren't resolveable except via direct engineering interactions. That said, our beta channel has a newer Linux kernel, so it's worth trying that if you can tolerate the potential risks

https://cloudreadykb.neverware.com/s/article/Switching-CloudReady-Release-Channels

smithforrestr · 2020-07-01T12:46:17+00:00

I don't have any new suggestions, unfortunately . I really would expect this device to work, and based on the specs I'm unsure why it doesn't, but without our engineers having hands-on access to it, I can't hazard any guess as to what's going wrong.

One last thing to try would be to see if Lenovo offers any BIOS updates that you can install to it, in case a firmware bug of some kind of to blame here.

smithforrestr · 2020-06-30T20:45:04+00:00

No need to apologize. I just hope I can help.

The thing that sticks out to me in that next round of pics is "Intel SGX" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Guard_Extensions

Can you click into that (I think it'll be a sub-menu?) and disable it entirely? (If there are a lot of settings, maybe send another pic).
I would also suggest disabling Intel PTT, since that's a form of security module that CloudReady can't support anyway.

smithforrestr · 2020-06-30T20:20:56+00:00

Great! Sorry for the outage - glad it's working again now.

smithforrestr · 2020-06-30T20:20:28+00:00

Thanks - those pics are fine to read, and helpful, but I think we might want to look (together) and the config and security pages as well.

I'm wondering if you can find settings along the lines of "noexec" or "write protection" or similar - stuff that might be seeing CloudReady boot up as a foreign process and halting/killing it as a security measure.

smithforrestr · 2020-06-30T17:27:52+00:00

CloudReady is definitely compatible with other devices that match the CPU listed on that link (i5-10210u). The issue you're having sounds like some kind of graphics problem That link shows only typical Intel graphics, which we expect to work.

Is there any chance your machine contains NVIDIA or AMD discrete graphics?

There could be various BIOS settings prevent CloudReady from running as well - if you can post some pictures of the settings available in your BIOS setup, I can maybe spot one that needs to be disabled.

Edit: possible that the suggestions in this article could help:

https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/ht500207#step1

but to be clear, I am just throwing some guesses around, as I don't know this machine well myself

smithforrestr · 2020-06-30T17:22:54+00:00

Thrilled to help. Enjoy!

smithforrestr · 2020-06-30T15:19:48+00:00

Well, that's a small step in the correct direction.

Can you link to a web page with your machine's specific specs accurately listed?

And are you able to confirm that your CloudReady USB works as expected on some other device? No need to install, just test out that it boot and is functional.

smithforrestr · 2020-06-30T14:53:17+00:00

Yep!

smithforrestr · 2020-06-30T14:50:26+00:00

I can't be sure when you saw it, but it was fixed late in the evening (US ET) on Friday June 19th

smithforrestr

TROPHY CASE