Running ChromeOS from a USB flash drive
Good afternoon, dear harazhiteli.
The network has enough material describing how you can see and evaluate the operating system from the Good Corporation using the example version for the ChromiumOS developers. Everything is good except one but: Do NOT include Flash, Java or the Google Voice / Video plugin for licensing reasons. It turns out that you can see, but use without the need to buy a Chromebook not. This article describes my approach to solving the problem: Launching ChromeOS (not to be confused with ChromiumOS) from a flash drive on regular hardware.
Interested please under cat.
Descriptions of the assembly of ChromiumOS from source on the network are sufficient, starting with the official one . There is also a way to convert in the original. My modest attempts to describe assembly and conversion using the VMWare virtual environment are also available. It's time to transfer the virtual image to USB-Flash and run ChromeOS on the physical machine.
A small digression from the topic related to the question: Why complicate things like that when you can make it a lot easier? Unfortunately, all experiments with various installation options eventually led to just such a scheme. Attempts to convert versions from a USB drive to a physical device showed one feature that worked on a virtual machine but refused to work on a laptop. After rewriting partitions during reboot, VM ChromiumOS detected the included developer mode and performed partition recovery. As a result, ChromeOS booted up. I could not achieve a similar situation directly from the flash drive. Because everything is so complicated.
General plan of action:
- we compile the image for VMWare from the source.
- convert ChromiumOS to ChromeOS.
- transfer the virtual image to a USB flash drive to run on a laptop.
We will not consider in detail the first two points, we will dwell on the differences. Let me remind you that all actions are performed in the Debian7 x64 environment. For convenience, add a variable with the kernel we need:
$ export BOARD = amd64-generic
After assembling the packages, we will collect the image with the developer mode on and the
scan disabled at boot, which makes it possible to modify the root system: $ cros_sdk - ./build_image —board = $ {BOARD} —noenable_rootfs_verification dev We
write the image for the VMWare virtual machine
$ cros_sdk - ./image_to_vm .sh --format = vmware --board = $ {BOARD}
In the ~ / src / build / images / amd64-generic / latest / folder, we get the chromiumos.vmx configuration file and ide.vmdk disk image . Add a description of the network card to the configuration: ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"
By means of VMWare we update and expand the disk image. In my case, I indicated the size of 7Gb for writing to an 8Gb flash drive. (Edit virtual machine settings-> Hard Disk-> Utilites-> Expand).
Next, you need to expand the / home section so that it is enough to download and unpack the system during conversion. If you carry out all the manipulations in a linux environment, just install Gparted and use it to expand the partition. Alternatively, you can use any Live-CD disk with linux distribution, for example, a Lubuntu image where you can start the system from disk and use Gparted. Add a CD-ROM to our virtual machine and specify the iso disk. In the BIOS of the virtual machine, select the boot from the CD. We make manipulations with the section.
We convert the system, boot into ChromeOS to make sure everything went smoothly. Using the qemu package, we convert the image of the virtual HDD and write to the USB flash drive:
$ sudo apt-get install qemu
$ qemu-img convert -f vmdk ide.vmdk -O raw ide.raw
$ sudo dd if = ~ / vmware / chrome / ide. raw of = / dev / sdb The
bootable flash drive with ChromeOS is ready.
Screenshots of the system:
PS : I did not consciously describe all points of the solution in detail, indicating only links. There are a lot of descriptions, and my options do not claim to be original. If the need arises, the above articles will be finalized in more detail and posted on the hub
Update : I add a link to my working imagefor recording on USB Flash 8Gb. I found out that in order to run correctly, you need to enable UEFI support in the device BIOS (laptop, PC).
On my Samsung laptop, this item is called "UEFI Boot Support".
Hope the article was helpful.
The network has enough material describing how you can see and evaluate the operating system from the Good Corporation using the example version for the ChromiumOS developers. Everything is good except one but: Do NOT include Flash, Java or the Google Voice / Video plugin for licensing reasons. It turns out that you can see, but use without the need to buy a Chromebook not. This article describes my approach to solving the problem: Launching ChromeOS (not to be confused with ChromiumOS) from a flash drive on regular hardware.
Interested please under cat.
Descriptions of the assembly of ChromiumOS from source on the network are sufficient, starting with the official one . There is also a way to convert in the original. My modest attempts to describe assembly and conversion using the VMWare virtual environment are also available. It's time to transfer the virtual image to USB-Flash and run ChromeOS on the physical machine.
A small digression from the topic related to the question: Why complicate things like that when you can make it a lot easier? Unfortunately, all experiments with various installation options eventually led to just such a scheme. Attempts to convert versions from a USB drive to a physical device showed one feature that worked on a virtual machine but refused to work on a laptop. After rewriting partitions during reboot, VM ChromiumOS detected the included developer mode and performed partition recovery. As a result, ChromeOS booted up. I could not achieve a similar situation directly from the flash drive. Because everything is so complicated.
General plan of action:
- we compile the image for VMWare from the source.
- convert ChromiumOS to ChromeOS.
- transfer the virtual image to a USB flash drive to run on a laptop.
We will not consider in detail the first two points, we will dwell on the differences. Let me remind you that all actions are performed in the Debian7 x64 environment. For convenience, add a variable with the kernel we need:
$ export BOARD = amd64-generic
Hint: All actions related to compiling and assembling the image are necessary and can be carried out only on a 64-bit operating system. SDK will not allow you to collect packages on x86. Support for i686 32-bit systems is planned in the future.
After assembling the packages, we will collect the image with the developer mode on and the
scan disabled at boot, which makes it possible to modify the root system: $ cros_sdk - ./build_image —board = $ {BOARD} —noenable_rootfs_verification dev We
write the image for the VMWare virtual machine
$ cros_sdk - ./image_to_vm .sh --format = vmware --board = $ {BOARD}
In the ~ / src / build / images / amd64-generic / latest / folder, we get the chromiumos.vmx configuration file and ide.vmdk disk image . Add a description of the network card to the configuration: ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"
By means of VMWare we update and expand the disk image. In my case, I indicated the size of 7Gb for writing to an 8Gb flash drive. (Edit virtual machine settings-> Hard Disk-> Utilites-> Expand).
Next, you need to expand the / home section so that it is enough to download and unpack the system during conversion. If you carry out all the manipulations in a linux environment, just install Gparted and use it to expand the partition. Alternatively, you can use any Live-CD disk with linux distribution, for example, a Lubuntu image where you can start the system from disk and use Gparted. Add a CD-ROM to our virtual machine and specify the iso disk. In the BIOS of the virtual machine, select the boot from the CD. We make manipulations with the section.
Hint: You can get into the BIOS of the virtual machine VM-> Power-> Power On to BIOS
We convert the system, boot into ChromeOS to make sure everything went smoothly. Using the qemu package, we convert the image of the virtual HDD and write to the USB flash drive:
$ sudo apt-get install qemu
$ qemu-img convert -f vmdk ide.vmdk -O raw ide.raw
$ sudo dd if = ~ / vmware / chrome / ide. raw of = / dev / sdb The
bootable flash drive with ChromeOS is ready.
Screenshots of the system:
PS : I did not consciously describe all points of the solution in detail, indicating only links. There are a lot of descriptions, and my options do not claim to be original. If the need arises, the above articles will be finalized in more detail and posted on the hub
Update : I add a link to my working imagefor recording on USB Flash 8Gb. I found out that in order to run correctly, you need to enable UEFI support in the device BIOS (laptop, PC).
On my Samsung laptop, this item is called "UEFI Boot Support".
Hope the article was helpful.