I was contacted by an IT manager (in cc:) who was having trouble re-imaging his snow device with a recovery image.  He solved the problem by downloading an earlier recovery image (he figured out the URL).  This suggests that the latest image is bad.

I am copying the relevant information from his email:

"I own quite old samsung chromebook, exact model snow bara d-j 4243"

"Some time ago I noticed that the chromebook did not want to upgrade any more, despite that it was downloading newer version." (This may be a separate problem?)

"So I decided to do a recovery with the newest image.  I have been stuck on the recovery screen since then."

Error detail:

Starting firmware updater (//usr/sbin/chromeos-firmwareupdate --mode=recovery)
Command: //usr/sbin/chromeos-firmwareupdate --mode=recovery
Starting Google_Snow firmware updater v4 (recovery)...
 - Updater package: [Google_Snow.2695.117.0 / EC:snow_v1.3.139-375eb9f]
 - Current system:  [RO:Google_Snow.2695.132.0 , ACT:Google_Snow.2695.132.0 / EC:snow_v1.3.139-375eb9f]
 - Write protection: Hardware: ON, Software: Main=ON EC=ON
mv: cannot stat 'bios-snow-2695.132.ro.bin': No such file or directory
ERROR: Execution failed: ./updater4.sh (error code = 1)
Finished after 2 seconds.
Failed Command: //usr/sbin/chromeos-firmwareupdate --mode=recovery - Exit Code 1
Firmware update failed (error code: 1).
Rolling back update due to failure installing required firmware.

(full recovery log will be attached)

Then:

"Finally I figured it out. I remembered that the chrome os version that used to work was from 23 June 2018. I googled which version exactly it was and downloaded the image from the google server (that required some creative thinking to figure out the exact url). I created a recovery usb using that image and it worked! I have working chromebook again."


"I tried again to upgrade it from running system and for a moment I saw the message that this chromebook is too old and will no longer be automatically updated. Then after few second the message disappeared and it started downloading newer chrome os. After that nothing happened, the upgrade did not work as before."