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Debugging a Linux Boot Failure Caused by a Chromebook's SD Card Controller Race Condition

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My Chromebook Wouldn't Boot Unless I Physically Removed the SD Card — Here's the Bug I Found

I recently dual-booted Ubuntu onto an old Chromebook by installing it to an SD card, keeping ChromeOS intact on the internal storage. The install went fine. Then I rebooted, and hit a wall.

Every single time, the boot process would get partway through, throw an ALERT! UUID=... does not exist, and drop me into a bare (initramfs) recovery shell. The only way out was to physically pull the SD card out, push it back in, and type exit. Then it would boot fine, until the next reboot, when the whole thing happened again.

That's not something you want to do every time you open your laptop.

This post is the diagnosis and fix, in case you hit the same wall.

The setup

  • Chromebook with an Apollo Lake CPU (Celeron N3350, board name coral)
  • ...

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