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Chromebooks and Chrome OS: ChrUbuntu 12.04. Now with double the bits!

Chromebooks and Chrome OS

Chrome, Chrome OS, Chromebooks, Chromium, Chromium OS, the Cr-48, Samsung Series 5, Acer AC700, Google, Linux and other misc. topics
SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 2012

ChrUbuntu 12.04. Now with double the bits!

I'm excited to announce the release of ChrUbuntu 12.04! ChrUbuntu is a clean install of Ubuntu 12.04, the latest Long Term Service release customized to run on Chromebooks. This is the first Ubuntu for Chromebooks that is 64-bit which means it will be twice as fast! Okay, maybe not but it'll at least be compatible with Chrome OS going forward as Google moved to a 64-bit kernel with Chrome OS R19 :-) Also with this release, Chromebook features like 2-finger scrolling and audio and brightness controls work out of box. ChrUbuntu has been successfully installed on the Cr-48 and Samsung Series 5. I don't have a Acer Chromebook to test with but there's no reason it shouldn't work also. If you succeed in installing it on your Acer, let me know in the comments. Installing ChrUbuntu is extremely easy, just follow the steps below. Want to say thank you for ChrUbuntu? Feel free to do so in the comments below or show your support by visiting the advertisements on this blog. If you purchase a Chromebook or any other Amazon items using the links on the right, I get a small portion of the cost :-) 1. To get started, make sure your Chromebook is in developer mode and has a developer BIOS installed. See Google's instructions for the Cr-48, Samsung Series 5 or the Acer AC700 depending on your model. Samsung and Acer owners should pay special attention to the Developer BIOS instructions. 2. Make sure you are on the latest Chrome OS dev channel release. See Google's instructions for help. 3. Reboot your Chromebook but do not login. Make sure you have a WiFi or USB Ethernet connection at this point. 3G is not recommended. Press CTRL+ALT+=> (=> is the forward arrow where the F2 key would be on a PC). Do not use the normal CTRL+ALT+T method to get a shell. Use the CTRL+ALT+=> method while no one is logged in. 4. Login as user chronos, no password is needed. 5. As the chronos user, run: wget http://goo.gl/oyjlt; sudo sh oyjlt Make sure you have the command exactly right. oyjlt is all lowercase letters and would sound like "oh why jay el tee" if you said it out loud (go ahead, try it!). If you get a "not found" error, make sure you have Internet connectivity. 6. The Chrome OS stateful partition where your data and settings are stored is just short of 11gb by default, the script shrinks the stateful partition to make room for ChrUbuntu.
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Chromebooks and Chrome OS: ChrUbuntu 12.04. Now with double the bits!

7.

8.

9.

10. 11. 12.

You can choose to give ChrUbuntu from 5gb up to 10gb in 1gb increments. I recommend not going higher than 9 though as 10 leaves Chrome OS with very little free space (less than 1gb). Once you've entered a number 5 through 10, your hard drive will be repartitioned. It may look like the Chromebook is doing nothing for 10-15 minutes but let it be, after awhile it will reboot and re-initialize the stateful partition. This process takes about 5 minutes and then the Chromebook reboots again and shows you the Welcome screen you got when you first turned on your Chromebook out of the cardboard box. Go through the Chrome OS setup process again until you get to the Google login page. You'll need to have a WiFi or Ethernet connection again at this point. 3G is not recommended. Now follow steps 3 through 5 again. This time the script will see that you've already made room for Ubuntu and will start downloading the ChrUbuntu image and copying it to the SSD. There are 52 100mb files to be downloaded. Each is compressed so the actual download size ranges from less than 1mb in size to 90mb in size. The total size of all the files is about 1gb compressed and 5gb uncompressed so the download and install will take awhile. The files are named ubuntu-1204.binXX.bz2 (where XX is aa, ab, ac, ad, ae, af... ba, bb, bc... all the way to bz). If you want to see how big each piece is, take a look here. The script keeps track of which of the 52 files have been successfully installed so if you lose Internet connectivity, or the battery dies (you should be plugged in BTW), etc, just re-run Step 8 and it should resume where it left off. After all 52 files have been downloaded and copied to the SSD, the script will make a few more updates to your Cr-48 and then reboot. You'll see ChrUbuntu start up! The username is "user" and the password is "user" if you need to make changes. Right now, you're in ChrUbuntu but if you reboot, you'll be back in Chrome OS. To make ChrUbuntu the default, run: sudo cgpt add -i 6 -P 5 -S 1 /dev/sda

(password is "user"). It should be possible to run this from ChrUbuntu or Chrome OS. 13. To make Chrome OS the default again, either turn off Developer Mode, or run: sudo cgpt add -i 6 -P 0 -S 1 /dev/sda
Jay Lee at Saturday, April 28, 2012
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14 comments:
spartahawk Apr 28, 2012 07:06 AM Thanks Jay! Awesome!

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Chromebooks and Chrome OS: ChrUbuntu 12.04. Now with double the bits!

Does turning off Dev mode erase Ubuntu or just make it unavailable? For example if I went off Dev mode and then switched back to Dev mode, Ubuntu would still be able to boot? Reply

Jay Lee

Apr 28, 2012 09:39 AM

@spartahawk: it makes ChrUbuntu unavailable as the secure boot process will refuse to boot from the unofficial partitions. Note that that on the Samsung and Acer you might need to flash back to the normal (non-dev) BIOS with: chromeos-firmwareupdate --mode tonormal before going back to normal, non-dev mode with the switch. Worst case scenario, USB Recovery should ALWAYS restore the Chromebook to 100% official Google bits :-) Reply Replies spartahawk Apr 29, 2012 07:10 PM You may or may not want to mention this, and perhaps it's just obvious anyway: If your script has been used in the past and the SSD is already partitioned accordingly, it just goes ahead and starts downloading the 52 100mb files. It is doing that right now for me, and I'm guessing I won't be repeating steps 3 through 5. Reply

Unknown Apr 28, 2012 11:59 AM Thanks for the guide. I just got my series 5 chromebook yesterday (I know right? So late the party!) and installed 11.04 via your guides but I was upset that I would have to use old versions of Ubuntu but then here you come with this guide. Things seem to be running well after installing gnome3 (gnome > unity imo), and the wifi dropping issues I was having seem to be gone with this update. Thanks for the guide and script. Reply

zyc Apr 28, 2012 04:56 PM Great. I will install it on my CR-48. Thank you!
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Reply

luislag1110 Apr 28, 2012 08:20 PM after typing wget http://goo.gl/oyjlt; sudo sh oyjlt it says "you're not running a 64-bit version of chrome os! make sure you've updated to the latest Dev channel chrome os release then re-run this script." what do i do? Reply Replies Thomas Taschauer Apr 29, 2012 12:51 AM As the error suggests: "update to the latest dev channel chrome os release, then re-run this script". ;) You can find instructions here: http://support.google.com/chromeos/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1086915 But I guess the dev channel is not good for you... Reply

alex Apr 28, 2012 08:27 PM Thanks Jay. I was considering going from 11.10 and upgrading the whole way...my poor cr48 couldn't handle it though. To build on the post someone made above, Gnome 3 is very usable, and it's what I use on my 'main' daily use computer. Once you use it for awhile the workflow is much better than unity/aero/insert your ui here. Reply Replies shinji257 Apr 29, 2012 02:02 PM How did you install Gnome 3?

shinji257 Apr 30, 2012 06:22 AM Nevermind. I figured this out. If you want to install Gnome 3 (and it does work surprisingly well on an older cr48 unit) then this guide may be of use. --> http://www.filiwiese.com/installing-gnome-on-ubuntu-12-04-precise-pangolin/ It suggests status-monitor shell extension for an addon but if you install it make sure you install package gir1.2-gtop-2.0 first from the ubuntu repos otherwise you
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will get an error. Took me a few minutes to realize that I needed something else first. Reply

Forrest Cate Apr 29, 2012 07:00 AM Is this recommended over update manager? Reply Replies shinji257 Apr 30, 2012 06:24 AM This will wipe out your existing ubuntu data so if you are looking to may work out better for you. Update manager will upgrade your however. The main advantage to using this and starting over is that switchover from using a 32-bit kernel to a 64-bit one which will performance benefits. I will say that it does run a bit snappier now. Reply start fresh this existing install it also marks a provide some

pspmodel2001 Apr 29, 2012 11:19 PM To make switching easier, do this Go into the Home folder in Ubuntu and press "Control + h" together. Click the file named .bashrc Edit the .bashrc file, and add this to the end of the file: alias chromeos='sudo cgpt add -i 6 -P 0 -S 1 /dev/sda;echo "Switched to Chrome OS, restart the machine to take effect"' Go to your terminal, and type in chromeos. You will be switched to Chrome OS when you restart. In Chrome OS, press Ctrl+Alt+F2 to open bash, login as chronos. Inside Chrome OS press Ctrl + Alt + =>. Type in chronos, then sudo su, then qemacs .profile Now type in alias ubuntu='sudo cgpt add -i 2 -P 0 -S 0 /dev/sda;sudo cgpt add -i 6 -P 5 -S 1 /dev/sda;echo "Switched to Ubuntu, restart the machine to take effect"' Now to save the file press Control + x + s until it says it did it. Then press Control + x + c until you go back in terminal. In terminal type Ubuntu and you should be in Ubuntu, if not do Part 2 again. Congrats, now you can type Chromos to go to Chrome, Ubuntu to go to Ubuntu. Reply

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Nicholas Skaggs Apr 30, 2012 10:39 AM Thanks Jay -- I had just dedicated an overnight to having the little chromebook update itself to 12.04, this makes it much saner. Now I'm just going to re-install anyways, since this is 64bit ;-). Would you care to explain/help how your building these images (beyond the chromium wiki page). Is there a way I could build my own payload in a semi-automated fashion from an iso? Reply

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