I have no clue on where anything ended up. Or how to fix it.

[Braenonymous]

So, I have a Dell Inspiron 3181 chromebook (ya ya, I know, limited hw and all) but I had wanted to tinker around and completely erase the proprietary emmc storage and flash either xubuntu or a base kali dist, I had xubuntu running love on a usb flash, and I (before I wiped the emmc, dd'd kalis net installer to the emmc with the xubuntu drive still in the slot, and now I've got EFI partitions everywhere, zero GUI, only CLI and tty. It also has coreboot flashed to the emmc, and I think also now somehow EDK2 is popping up every so often, I really dont know where to begin to set it right, ive tried installing kde, xcfe4, but its constantly failing to fetch the repo. If I boot from a specific file through the stock bootloader, I'll have the kali gnu show up, with the graphical install options, but anything I choose, returns a missing vmlinuz, or kernel. Or what have you. I'd just like to know if it's salvagable. I do not have a second device other than an android phone, but it has rw abilities to a otg USB. I also want to mention, I parted the xubuntu drive, and put kali image on the second part of the same usb drive. I really did a number on it and idk. I can send the screens output if you want to help out. I'd greatly appreciate any sort of help lolol

 

[Alexzee]

Sorry to hear the grief your having with your chromebook.

I've learned from @Brickwizard that chromebooks can be difficult to install Linux on. Having said that if anyone can help you I think it's him.
Here's the specs on your chromebook .

Inspiron 3181 Setup and Specifications | Dell US

Any time that you get an error message that the vmlinuz or the kernel is missing you can bet that the kernel will not boot.

Do you still have any type of Linux Live on a usb?
And, can you provide a screenshot of the partitions?

 

[Braenonymous]

I don't have a functioning one at present no, i was dumb and half asleep trying to get it set up. Yeah, I've got them all looked into, and all that I could see, with a recognized fs were the following. I hope that the pictures aren't too bad of quality, my screen is broken, so i have to bend it just right or I have no display haha.

 

[Braenonymous]

I don't have a functioning one at present no, i was dumb and half asleep trying to get it set up. Yeah, I've got them all looked into, and all that I could see, with a recognized fs were the following. I hope that the pictures aren't too bad of quality, my screen is broken, so i have to bend it just right or I have no display haha.

But, im also not seeing any of the mmcblkXpY's for the internal emmc memory either listed here. Im fairly certain that the kernel is in one of the locations, but where. Is what i can't figure out

 

[Braenonymous]

Cause I found this elsewhere hidden away

 

[Alexzee]

From looking at your screenshots (thanks for that) I see that hd1 is your debian EFI boot partition.
The hd0 gpt 1 is your Kali Linux EFI partition.
The old kernel is in the 3rd screenshot labeled:

It appears that your root partition is shown in the 3rd screenshot 'hd0 gpt2'-
Try this at the grub>- prompt.

set root=(hdo,gpt2) and press Enter
Then at the grub>- prompt type:

linux /boot/vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/sda1
Then type:
initrd /boot/initramfs-linux.img and press Enter
Lastly type:
boot

I'm assuming that /dev/sda1 is your root partition. It could be /dev/sda2 as I'm not sure how you partitioned?
If it's 'not' /dev/sda1 then repeat the above commands again with /dev/sda2.


If I recall correctly and my Linux brother @wizardfromoz may know, if this distro is still installed to the hard drive you may not be able to recovery this system w/o the Live usb of Kali or xubuntu.

Chris Titus made a video for this that saved me from the mess that happened to my system last year when I lost power.

 

[Alexzee]

It's late and I have to work in the morning I'll bb tomorrow.

 

[wizardfromoz]

Welcome @Braenonymous , but no, I can't help. I have as little to do with Kali as possible.

I would be going back to the start and install something other than Kali.

Xubuntu is pretty good.

Someone else may have ideas.

Good luck.

Chris Turner
wizardfromoz

 

[Brickwizard]

Good morning,and welcome to the forums, I need to ask some questions,
your 2016 dell Chromebook came in several variants, can you tell us, .
1] how much ram you have 2,4,or 8Mb
2] which eMMC it has 16 or 32 Gb
if it has either 2mb of ram or 16Gb eMMC then it won't install or run most all singing all dancing Linux

 

[Brickwizard]

OK now the family is up I can continue,
to replace chrome with Linux you will need to disable write protection [before entering developer mode], this comes in many forms depending on make and age of the machine, it could be any of the following, Software in the bios, manual switch on the mother board or earthing screw on the motherboard, in your case its a pair of screws see dell worksheet at

Chromebook 3110 and 3110 2-in-1 RMA Shim Process | Dell US

addendum,
some distributions recommended [not by me] for Chromebooks.

Debian with driver pack [not usually problematic but will need the 32 GB eMMC]
Elementary [doesn't have automatic update]
Gallium [made specifically for Chromebooks, often has sound problems depending on sound chip installed]
Q4S [ no known problems]
Lubuntu [no known problems]

 

[Brickwizard]

kali dist,

to run a full working installation of Kali efficiently you will need 8Gb ram and 32 GB hard drive /eMMC [it will run on 4Gb of ram but very sluggish with your CPU [please read fully the Kali docs]

 

[Alexzee]

@Brickwizard
Thanks for tuning in.
You gave a real gem worth of information!

@Braenonymous
Can you confirm which make and model of your chromebook that you own and emmc (16 or 32 bit) please?

 

[Brickwizard]

@Alexzee
the OP has not been back since you last spoke to him

 

[Alexzee]

@Alexzee
the OP has not been back since you last spoke to him

He most likely moved on.