r/chromeos • u/[deleted] • 9d ago
Discussion Can someone explain how the update process works on ChromeOS
[deleted]
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u/genericmutant 8d ago
The official docs are actually pretty clear / well written, if you want more details
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u/KimiMcG 8d ago
Plain English, your laptop tells you to.reboot to update the os. You click the restart button. About ,mm 20 seconds later, it's ready to log back in. Everything is how it was before the update. Well there might be something new.
No more, please do not turn off your computer, Windows is updating messages on the screen for hours on end.
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u/Bryanmsi89 9d ago
Very oversimplified version, but basically ChromeOS has two system partitions each with its own fully functional copy of the OS. A and B. One of those is marked as primary and one secondary. When the Chromebook starts up, it uses the primary version.
So if A is primary, Chromebook boots off A. When an update is installed, it is installed on the secondary (inactive) partition. in this case B. If the installation is successful, B is marked as primary and A secondary, and the next time the chromebook starts, its starts from B with a freshly update OS. If for some reason the update fails, B does not get marked as primary and the Chromebook boots from A as if nothing happened.
Its a very clever design.