[Tails-dev] Chromebook Acer C720 fails to boot with "Not eno…

Delete this message

Reply to this message
Author: Daniel Kahn Gillmor
Date:  
To: The Tails public development discussion list
New-Topics: [Tails-dev] [PATCH] document workaround for Acer C720
Subject: [Tails-dev] Chromebook Acer C720 fails to boot with "Not enough memory to load specified image." [with workaround!]
I'm booting Tails on an Acer C720 Chromebook (2GiB RAM).

I followed the directions on the arch linux wiki to get [0] the machine
to boot using SeaBIOS (i had to convert to developer mode), and then
directed it to boot from the USB stick.

the syslinux bootscreen appears fine, but when i select "Tails" (or let
the timer count down), the screen goes black, and then white text
appears at the top saying:

-------------
Not enough memory to load specified image.
boot: _

-------------

if i type "menu_amd64" and hit enter, i get back to the syslinux boot
screen.

I can work around the problem by instructing syslinux that enough RAM is
actually available. I do this by hitting Tab during the syslinux screen
and appending " mem=1500m" (without the quotes).

I can also boot to grub (from a different USB stick) and translate the
syslinux stanzas from the built-in menus into the grub bootloader
dialect. this approach *doesn't* need the "mem=1500m", and boots fine.

I've rewritten the syslinux boot menu files to include mem=1500m so that
this USB stick will work on the Chromebook C720, but that doesn't seem
like a good long-term solution.

Any ideas? can we fix syslinux to autodetect the amount of RAM on the
C720 correctly somehow? i've never hacked on any bootloader but grub,
and am probably not the best person to do this kind of fixing.


I'm trying to clone the web site as suggested [1] with:

git clone https://git-tails.immerda.ch/tails

so that i can update the known_issues page [2], but it is taking a very
long time, so i have no patch handy to offer right now, sorry!

    --dkg



[0] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Acer_C720_Chromebook
[1] https://tails.boum.org/contribute/build/website/
[2] https://tails.boum.org/support/known_issues/