Thursday, April 28, 2011

Ubuntu 11.04 for the Cr-48 is ready!

Update: You should probably use the new ChrUbuntu 12.04 Install Guide instead of this one. This guide will not work on Chromebooks updated to Chrome OS version 19 or higher which will be virtually all Chromebooks by June of 2012.

Even though it's 4 months old, my how to install Ubuntu on the Cr-48 post is still very popular. Today I'm glad to announce that I've updated my install script to use the just announced Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal. First a few things:


  • If you followed my original guide and are running Ubuntu 10.10 happily, you should follow Ubuntu's standard upgrade instructions, not this guide. Following this guide will destroy your existing Ubuntu install including all your data! If you have 10.10 installed but wish to start clean (perhaps with a larger partition size, something the script now easily supports), you should do a USB Recovery of Chrome OS. Then after updating to the latest Chrome OS release, follow this guide.
  • If this is your first time installing Ubuntu, note that the installation process will reset your Cr-48 to Factory Defaults. You've been warned.
  • Yes, Unity is the default. That was the decision of the Ubuntu team. If you don't like it, complain to them, not here. You can choose to use to the Classic Desktop by default if you prefer.
  • The script now checks to see if the image files are on a local USB / SD Card before downloading them. Thus you can save all 52 of the ubuntu-1104.bin??.bz2 files to a flash drive and the script will use them. Make sure they're in the root folder of the drive.
Now the instructions:
  1. Get root. (also known as Developer mode)
  2. Reboot your Cr-48 but don't 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 used to be). Do not use the normal CTRL+ALT+T method to get a shell. Use the CTRL+ALT+=> method.
  3. Login as user chronos, no password is needed.
  4. As the chronos user, run "wget http://goo.gl/hnkxo; sudo sh hnkxo". If you get a "not found" error, make sure you have Internet connectivity.
  5. 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 Ubuntu. You can choose to give Ubuntu 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 Cr-48 is doing nothing for 10-15 minutes but let it be, after awhile it will reboot and re-initialize the stateful partition (told you it was going to wipe your data). This process takes about 5 minutes and then the Cr-48 reboots again and shows you the Welcome screen you got when you first turned on your Cr-48 out of the box.
  6. Go through the setup process 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 2 through 4 again. This time the script will see that you've already made room for Ubuntu and will start downloading the Ubuntu 11.04image and copying it to the SSD.
  7. 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 1.1gb compressed and 5gb uncompressed so the download and install will take awhile. The files are named ubuntu.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.
  8. 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 4 and it should resume where it left off.
  9. 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.
  10. You'll see Ubuntu 11.04 start up! The username is "user" and the password is "user" if you need to make changes.
  11. If you chose anything other than 5gb for the partition size, you'll need to "grow" the ext4 file system to fill the partition. Open a command prompt and run: "sudo resize2fs -p /dev/sda7". This will grow the ext4 partition to fill the free partition space.
  12. Right now, you're in Ubuntu but if you reboot twice, you'll be back in Chrome OS. To make Ubuntu 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 Ubuntu or Chrome OS.
  13. To make Chrome OS the default again, either pull the battery and turn off Developer Mode, or run "sudo cgpt add -i 6 -P 0 -S 1 /dev/sda".

250 comments:

  1. Dude...thank you! I was recently running out of room on my 10.10 install.

    Thx for this...can't wait to try it when i get home from work!

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  2. Gave us the latest 'buntu, gave us a way to resize the install partition with little headaches, and you gave us a way to dump everything to USB....

    Sir. You are made of Win.

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  3. I apologize for this comment being off-topic. I've searched around and have been unable to come up with an answer, and I believe you guys are likely to know the answer or have some resources to help.

    I believe canary for Mac is now available. See http://dev.chromium.org/developers/calendar and http://omahaproxy.appspot.com/

    Trouble is, where can I find it??

    Thanks.

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  4. Does this still have the issue with insanely slow download speeds over WPA encrypted wifi?

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  5. @xxdesmus: no, that was fixed ages ago. Though Google's servers where the image is hosted to tend to vary wildly in terms of the speed they offer the files. One will get 10k/sec and the next will get 1mb/sec.

    I find it goes much faster if you take your eyes off the progress bar :-)

    Jay

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  6. @Jay great ...sorry I missed that news. I'll download them to a thumb drive (as you mentioned) anyway. Sounds like it'll make for a smoother process given how fickle Google's servers can be.

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  8. Thanks a ton Jay! So, if I want to just put all the ubuntu files on a usb flash drive like you mentioned, if it is plugged in during this whole process, it will be detected and used instead of the online files source correct? Also, if I already put Ubuntu 11.04 on a usb for the use of installing it on any computer, could that just be used? Sorry for the noob questions. Thanks again, you rock!

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  9. Avast gives me a trojan warning for binau.bz2

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  10. Any time mine tries booting into Ubuntu, it just keeps booting to the sad Cr-48 screen. Now I have to recover, good thing my flash drive is still set up for that. I guess my install of Ubuntu got corrupt, should I run the code to tell it not to turn off the screen ever? It's been plugged in the whole time..

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  11. @Eion and @Kevo: had you previously installed 10.10 on this Cr-48? try doing a USB Recovery then install, let me know whether or not that solves it.

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  12. I did a first time install exactly as these instructions indicate and it worked perfectly for me so far.

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  13. I did a recovery first because I wanted to start fresh anyway. I'm gonna recover again, flip the switch, let it wipe itself, flip back to dev, set up Wi-Fi, and try this one last time. So far, two failed attempts.

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  14. Does it have to go to the sad face screen every time it boots up to ubuntu? Is there noway to skip that and just go directly to ubuntu with out it having to wait to go into dev mode?

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  15. Do screws have to be removed to do this?

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  16. @Brian -- Nothing needs to come out except the battery. Once. To flip the dev switch that is under the black tape. That is all.

    Horizontal scrolling actually works. One thing I have noticed is that click and drag is pretty bad. Can't control it (especially when resizing windows). But I know there are other ways to resize windows. But highlighting text is impossible with the trackpad. I will play around with the sensitivity settings. I wonder if it would be possible to use the google trackpad code to apply to the trackpad on ubuntu... That would make it perfect.

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  18. If you live in the DC area, I will buy you a beer. This is great, Im gonna try it now.

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  19. @spartahawk: Thanks!

    Has anyone tried using gnome 3 from the PPA on the cr-48?

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  20. I wiped my old Ubuntu in favor of 11.04 and more space. The multitouch doesn't work for me though. Before, I selected two touch in the mouse settings and it just worked. Now it doesn't. Is there a package I need to get or is there some trick I don't know? Thanks

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  21. running the script, will post when it works =) LOL was just about to put your old one on today, and then found this, cus I wanted Ubuntu 11, and you posted today! LOL!

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  22. @Travis: It's a false positive, the files are all parts of a Linux filesystem image that's been compressed, there's no Windows executables at all. Avast is known for giving lots of false positive warnings.

    Jay

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  23. The install worked great and I really appreciate the extra space and ability to load the files from SD. Thank you.

    So far, two finger scroll is not working. I went to Mouse and enabled two finger scroll, rebooted...

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  24. Two finger scroll works for me since I enabled it. It didn't work temporarily on my brother's cr-48 just now. Even though it is enabled. Wonder why

    Found a click-and-drag solution!
    It's weird, but it works pretty much perfectly. Use just one finger the entire time. Hard click with one finger, hold it down, and drag it while holding down. Problem solved. Anyone know how to do a right click using the touchpad? No keyboard combos that I have tried (alt, ctrl) will work.

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  25. I had it working, but then when I rebooted it went into chrome os! How do I get back to ubuntu? Please!

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  26. fixed it, no problem, so to go back to chrome, u just flip the dev switch?

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  27. For right click, two finger click works for me, but two finger scrolling doesn't. I like how this is still hit and miss..

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  28. Eion: Serious?! Man, that's funny. But I would trade you. Right click is way more important to me than two finger scrolling.

    Noah: Follow step 12 while you are in Dev mode (after it has loaded either Chrome OS or Ubuntu)
    To get to the place where you can type it in, either go to Applications->Terminal (Ubuntu) or if you are in Chrome, before you log in Press Ctrl+Alt+(TheRightBrowsingArrow at the top of the keyboard) and login as Chronos.

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  29. Wait.. they are BOTH working now for me. [knock on wood]

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  30. two finger click and scrolling work, but using two fingers to drag stuff SUCKS! and it doesn't work. Also, to get back to chrome os, just flip the dev switch? and to get back to ubantu put it back in dev mode?

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  31. I'm a little confused. If I have 10.10 installed but don't care about my data, can I resize my partition without a USB recovery of ChromeOS? I would just install 11.04 using Ubuntu's methods, but there's no room left on my 10.10 partition.

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  32. Thank you so much for this -- you're da man :)

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  34. If you want to switch back and forth between Chrome OS and Ubuntu without needing to move the developer switch to normal mode, follow the steps below.

    In Ubuntu, edit the .bashrc file in the home folder, 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"'
    Log out of Ubuntu, and log back in again.
    Now when you type chromeos in the terminal, you will be switched to Chrome OS when you restart.

    In Chrome OS, press Ctrl+Alt+F2 to open bash, login as chronos.
    Use this command to create a .profile file in the chronos home folder:
    qemacs .profile
    Type this line into the .profile file:
    alias ubuntu='sudo cgpt add -i 6 -P 5 -S 1 /dev/sda;echo "Switched to Ubuntu, restart the machine to take effect"'
    Press Ctrl+X then Ctrl+C, and press y, to save and exit qemacs.
    Type exit to logout, then log back in again.
    Now when you type ubuntu in bash, you will be switched to Ubuntu when you restart.

    Thanks Robby Chen for writing this guide, at http://blog.robbychen.com/2010/12/17/my-first-tip-on-using-ubuntu-with-chrome-os-on-cr-48-notebook/
    His blog seems to be down, which is why I to posted the instructions here.

    Thanks Jay Lee for making it really easy for us to install Ubuntu on the CR-48!

    Enjoy your dual-boot Chrome Notebook!

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  35. Get this: I don't have qemacs anymore. Anyone else? Dev build 0.12.433.14. Is this a bug, have they just removed it, did they replace it? Gotta set up that easy switching script. :/

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  36. no way that I can make it so I don't have to hit ctrl+D every time it starts up right?

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  37. This process works great, but there's one thing I'm a tad confused about: toggling between the two OS's. I'm in ubuntu right now & see that you say if you reboot twice...you should be backin chrome os. once you're back in chromeos, how do you get back to ubuntu that you had just setup?

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  38. The two finger dragging and dropping (for moving windows) etc doesn't work at all, it is very annoying

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  39. If you didn't see my previous post about

    **CLICK & DRAG**

    It works. Not how you would have thought though:
    Use just ONE finger the entire time. Hard click with one finger, hold it down, and drag it while holding down. Problem solved. The only difficult thing is click and dragging downward since you can't start the hard click at the top of the touchpad. Highlighting does work if you start at the bottom right of the text you are trying to highlight.

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  40. I upgraded directly from 10.10 and my trackpad performance hasn't changed a bit - scrolling, dragging, and right-clicking have always worked fine.

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  41. JayLee--> my problem was on my end...crap internet connection. Went to the common area in my building and redid the script and it worked great. Not sure how I feel about unity so far.

    Thanks a lot

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  42. @Eion Woods
    qemacs has been replaced by vi in the most recent dev release.

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  43. After a day using Unity, I pretty much hated it. Switched to Ubuntu Classic. Aaaaaaah. Much, much better. And seemingly faster.

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  44. I'm getting an error saying "Cannot write to 'hnkxo' (Read-only file system) sh:can't open hnkxo"

    Any idea what this is? I tried updating from ubuntu, failed, then tried this and this comes up. tried wiping again and trying again and this keeps happening. Any idea what this is?

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  45. I posted earlier about the possible trojan and wanted to clear that up.. Avast actually hit on a couple of the files so i had to turn it off while downloading. The problem is that when Avast sees an archive file that has a super high compression ratio it thinks it is a decompression bomb, and quarantines it. Nothing to worry about.

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  46. @paul: make sure you're running as chronos, not root. you should be in /home/chronos directory.

    Jay

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  47. @Jay: That did it, thanks! On my way to some Unity beauty!

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  49. Jay, this script is uber-cool, outrageously cool! Wow, thank you.

    I'm a newbie, so bear with me:

    I want to change the script so that I can allocate 20 GB to Ubuntu (I upgraded the SSD). So, I'm thinking that I use Text Edit on my Mac and change the line – $ubuntu_size -gt 20 ] – to allow a max 20 GB drive, and then save the file (ubuntu-1104-install.sh) as a plain text file.

    Before uploading on a server, do I first make it executable? If so, do I open Terminal on my Mac and run: chmod +x ubuntu-1104-install.sh ?

    Thanks for your help, Jay! Amazing stuff.

    –steve.

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  50. i keep getting a "redirection unexpected" error. anyone know why?

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  51. Never mind, i got a work around. Instead of using the whole http://goo.gl/hnkxo; sudo sh hnkxo I used them both separately
    So....if anyone is having this problem, just use
    "wget http://goo.gl/hnkxo"
    wait for it to download then use
    "sudo sh hnkxo" (I used sudo sh hnkxo.8 cuz I apparently downloaded it 8 times lol)

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  52. I think you have made this ridiculously easy. Great work, Jay! Installing now :)

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  53. @DOoBiX You forgot a couple instructions there. Here is a little change to it


    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.

    I used a little info from http://www.chromeoslounge.com/cr-48-chrome-notebook/548-easy-way-install-ubuntu-cr-48-a-8.html#post9580

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  54. Just a note, if you have the latest dev build, the qemacs .profile line will instead be vi .profile

    And make a note that at the end of the last command where it said effect"' there is a ' after the "

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  55. ugh 1 finger dragging is annoying, any way to "hack" it to make 2 finger possible?

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  56. I followed your guide to install 10.10 a few months ago, and all was well. I used this guide to get my touchpad working: http://cr-48.wikia.com/wiki/Getting_the_Trackpad_Working_in_Ubuntu

    After upgrading to 11.04 (using the built in update manager) my touchpad does not work at all. I can use a USB mouse but if you could provide some insight on how to get the touchpad working it would be awesome! And thank you for the guides :)

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  57. I love this guide a lot, thanks for making such a clever and useful script. :)

    PS: Just figured this out, as a little gift to people who can't bear how it's so hard to tweak Unity, good old CompizConfig Manager reveals that Unity is just a compiz plugin and has two pages of tweakable settings. Run this in terminal (ctrl-alt-t in Ubuntu) to install, then click unity to tweak its settings: sudo apt-get install compiz compizconfig-settings-manager

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  58. When do you adjust the partition sizes on the install? It never prompts me. Is there a file I must edit before the install. I can easily install both and dual boot but don't know how to adjust the partitions.

    Thanks!

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  59. I might be missing something here, I'm not getting the option to resize the drive.

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  60. I'm with ya Paul. I have tried several times. No option to resize the drive.

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  61. Yea, and that resizing thing would be really helpful for me since I have some problem with hard drive space.

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  63. Does anybody know the password for "user"?

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  64. @Paul I factory reseted the Cr48 with a USB recovery. Fixed all my issues because it repartitioned the whole drive. Give it a try.

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  65. @Dakota Layne I followed your guide, but when I typed it said "chromeos is not a command".

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  66. @john hm....are you sure that you edited the right file and saved it?
    Also, make sure that you put a single ' at the end of it. It's kinda hard to see on here but it's "' not just "

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  67. @Jay like trucker, I used your guide to get 10.10 on my machine, but I have run out of space. How can I increase the partition space so I can upgrade from the upgrade manager without doing a fresh install? Any help would be appreciated

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  68. @Dakota Layne, I believe so, and I copy + paste the command so there shouldn't be any errors.

    I open up .bashrc, move all the way down to the end of the file and add the command under "fi" line.

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  69. Since you're using vi and not emacs, you need to use the vi commands. Here's a walkthrough: http://www.washington.edu/computing/unix/vi.html

    Also, has anyone figured out how to get rid of the keyring prompt at login? I'm not too good with Linux yet so I can't figure out what I need to change.

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  70. @John hmm strange.... I'm not too sure why this would be happening.
    Have you tried restarting before using the command?

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  71. Also, for whoever was wondering about the Gnome 3 PPA, it works. Not enirely, but I imagine that is how it is on all 11.04 systems. Notably the hardware buttons (brightness, volume and power) don't work but I didn't think to check if they worked inside Unity but I doubt it.

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  72. @Dakota Layne I got the ubuntu working by doing the exact same thing as last night (...) now however I have question about the Chrome os part.

    It hangs when I pressed ctrl + x + s... for quite a long time actually, I have to force to shut it down because is not moving.

    I'm wondering it should take this long...

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  73. @Lake Holiday Homes: Awesome, I tried it, totally works. Thanks!

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  75. @djratchet: do a google search for "ubuntu cleanup" or "ubuntu remove packages", you should be able to find some stuff you're not using that can be removed. Otherwise you may need to backup your data on 10.10 and do a clean install of 11.04 with a larger partition.

    @Paul: The script only prompts for partition sizes if the existing partitions are at factory default sizes. You'll need to perform a USB recovery back to defaults and then run the script, at that point you should be prompted for the size you want.

    @Zafar: I recommend a clean install of 11.04... Sorry I never upgraded the 10.10 to 11.04 so I'm not even sure where to begin advising you on what the problem may be.

    @Steve L: not sure how to advise you as I don't have a Cr-48 with an upgraded SSD to test with. I suggest you try a few things and see what works. Be sure to report your results here for the benefit of others. That or you could purchase a larger SSD and send it my way :-)

    Jay

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  76. Hello Mr. Jay Lee,

    Thank you for these scripts, the 10.10 and the 11.04.

    I tried both scripts, had about 20+ crashes on the first one, and then about 5 on the newer one.


    The weirdest crash I get is when the screen freezes, the panels disappear, and the mouse pointer becomes a wrist watch icon. I have to hold the power button to shutdown cr48. When I restart, it gives me the "Chrome OS is broken" green screen and asks me to recover. I don't recover just yet, I keep turning on and off the cr48, and eventually, the blue screen comes up, I hit Ctrl+D and Ubuntu works again.

    Sorry for the long comment, just wondering if this issue is due to Ubuntu or the Cr48.

    Thanks for Reading and your contribution.

    P.S. I second Andrew's comment, you really are made of win!

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  77. "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."

    For some reason, when typing in the terminal "ubuntu" it does nothing.

    When I go back to edit the file and save, it will not do anything if I hit Ctrl +X +S

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  78. Fixed it, you have to do the command "Source .profile" for the file to activate it, remember this is after using the "Sudo Su" command, then it should work.

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  79. After I did the .profile file and sourced it like it was said to do in the comment above, I typed in "ubuntu" and then I get "-sh: ubuntu: not found" What do I do?

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  80. I figured it out. After you source the .profile file, the CR-48 needs to be restarted. Then "ubuntu" should work.

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  81. Yes^ Remember that every time you switch you need to source the profile

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  82. Jay, I accidentally ruined the boot option when trying to get some shortcuts to work, so I'm starting fresh again, and whenever I type the very first command in to download the script and run it, it downloads it, then says "Unknown id: hnkxo"

    Any ideas?

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  83. Hey Jay, YOU ARE AWESOME! that being said, can you offer some fantastic insight on a few subjects? It seems that your 11.04 install has 3g working OOTB. But GPS is a no-go, and multitouch is.. sporadic at best. THANKS!

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  85. Has anybody tried to install the custom bios, install Ubuntu and use grub to move between CrOS and Ubuntu? My efforts have taken me nowhere. I follow this guide to set aside space and then install the custom bios to install ubuntu. However, I don't know if I am missing something or doing something wrong because I see an "unknown" linux but when I try to boot from it, it tells me that there is amissing file or something. I would think it can be done. What do you think? Anyone?

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  86. can somebody explain the -i -P -S in the "cgpt" command? I'f my Ubuntu install is larger than 5gb would that change the value for this? Also does it matter which OS I use to grow the ext4 partition?

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  87. How can we run Plymouth splashes on startup/ shutdown with this?

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  88. Hi Guys,

    Sorry to ask for this question. after installing the ubuntu and log-in as user it always show
    init: cups main process ended, respawning..
    did i miss something on the process?
    How to go main GUI or desktop?

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  89. what would be the alias/cgpt command to terminate session instead of manually rebooting. I saw this somewhere but can't remember what it is off the top of my head...?

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  90. The current developer channel no longer supports qemacs - it has been replaced with vim.
    I put together a guide to use vim to create shortcuts for switching between Ubuntu and Chrome OS here:
    http://cr48.wikispaces.com/Create+shortcuts+for+dual-booting

    Hope this helps.

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  91. That is a great tutorial John. So, no one has tried to use GRUB to select CrOS or Ubuntu at startup without using a terminal?

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  92. Strange. I updated from 10.10 to 11.04 using the normal in-OS updater, and whatever magic that kept my trackpad working fine carried over. Then today, when I flipped the switch to peruse and update ChromeOS. I flipped back, and entered the dev mode of ChromeOS.
    After some web searching and whathaveyou, I used the command to boot back into Ubuntu. Worked fine, until I noticed my trackpad started acting up.
    Any reason why this would happen? The only thing I can think that really happened was the typical "wiping" during the boot verify.

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  93. Another thing I am annoyed with - Whenever I boot into Ubuntu now my Volume Up button seems to open the first menu on the top bar. It's set to work the volume as it should be in the Keyboard Shortcuts, and whenever I re-set it the button works fine. After powering down and restarting however, the strange menu effect is back. This started after upgrading. Any thoughts?

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  94. when i try to login as "chronos" with no password, it keeps searching for the account, making me wait and never logs in.

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  95. @asher I'm having the same problem with the volume up key.

    Also I'm having trackpad issues as well haha. Two finger right click works half the time but thats it. I faintly remember seeing something in the comments of the last guide where someone figured out a way to get the track pad working.. ill go looking and see what i can find.

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  96. Any chance that their will be a Windows XP and or Windows 7 version of this guide?

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  97. @Requisition

    http://hexxeh.net/?p=328117655

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  98. @Requisition: No. Running Ubuntu on the Cr-48 like this works because Ubuntu is perfectly happy to use Chrome OSes Linux kernel (which is what this script actually does). There's no way to get Windows on a Chromebook without flashing the BIOS which basically makes it not a Chromebook and defeats the whole point.

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  99. If you have updated to the latest dev you will have tons of problems. I was able to run the script the first time just fine but after the reboot the script would NOT download and run. When I had in wget "http://goo.gl/hnkxo; sudo su hnkxo" it would try to run this in wget: wget"http://goo.gl/hnkxo;%20sudo%20su%20hnkxo" and give me a not found. I tried to download the script then run it seperately but that wouldnt work either. I tried to chmod the downloaded script to 777 but that ran me nowhere as well. I had already downloaded the script and the bz2 files to my sd card so I figured if I could mount /devs/sdb1 /media and then cd /media then I could chmod 777 the ubuntu-install-1104.sh file and then sudo ./ubuntu-install-1104.sh. This worked and it is currently copying files from the flash drive and running the script. This took me a good 40 minutes if failure (including some vi to check the script, mv to move the script and renaming it and other crappy bash things that ultimately failed) before I could get it working. Thanks for the awesome script nonetheless!

    ReplyDelete
  100. ....and I got into ubuntu fine, then I set the profile to change back to chromeos. Now I have a major problem after I changed the bios to the insyde (so I didnt have to see unhappy face all the time) My => does not appear to be the shortcut now for me to be able to load up a termial. I can't get to ctrl + alt + => now to set the profile so I can switch back to ubuntu. Any suggestions?

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  101. Hi

    I have spent close to 10hours trying to install ubuntu on my cr48. I tried both this one and the 10. version.

    It downloads, but some of the files doesnt finish. It skips them and moves on. Then when it is "complete" i reboots but i get the green recover screen. If i try enough times it will eventually get to the standard chrome login screen. Then login as chronos and write the wget http://goo.gl/hnkxo; sudo sh hnkxo and it reboots and gives me the green screen as before.

    Also i have had to recover the chrome os so many times that i have broken 2usb pens. Is this normal?

    Can anybody help me? please!

    - Rune

    ReplyDelete
  102. Hey there Jay Lee.
    Brilliant tutorial, as this is very very helpful and works very well.
    I just had a concern for you:

    I upgraded the SSD in my Chrome Notebook to 40 gbs and I was wondering if there was any way to modify the partition tables to allow Ubuntu about 30 gbs.

    Thanks for reading this,
    Rahul

    ReplyDelete
  103. Is it possible to show a plymouth splash on startup? why does mountall need to stop plymouth?

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  104. Argh! Two-finger scrolling and right-click don't work at all for me. This is devastating. I wish it would magically start working for me like it has for others.

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  105. i installed a bunch of new updates tonight and now have support for two finger scroll. Overall the mouse is much better now.

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  106. 'Ello sir. Wonderful script as always. Two things...
    For the general public: Any performance tips you could give? My Cr-48 seems to not be playing as nice with this as it did with 10.10.
    To the author: How difficult would it be to set up a similar script for JoliOS?

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  107. Do you think this script would work if I pointed at a Linux Mint ISO instead? After all it is a Ubuntu derivative.

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  108. So, after following the guide, Ubuntu does start; however, ubuntu starts as terminal (no UI) and when I try "startx" it outputs a long list of words. What went wrong? Any suggestions?

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  109. I'm getting the 'constantly loops back to the blue frownie face screen' bug. This after doing a fresh install of 11.04 which had been working fin other than a few times where x would crash.

    "sudo cgpt add -i6 -P5 -S1 /dev/sda"

    Worked fine till late Sunday then whenever I try booting into the ubuntu partition it'll do the dev mode screen. Go black like it's trying to boot, then flip back to the dev mode screen.

    Frustrating.

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  110. I got 11.04 installed perfectly fine on my new CR-48, including dual-booting etc, however found several fairly major issues.

    1) The trackpad is extremely flaky. Two-finger scroll doesn't work no matter what. I spent several hours messing around with the opensource synaptics drivers and various parameters in the 50-synaptics.conf, and the best I was able to achieve was scrolling using my thumb held horizontally.

    2) Additionally, there's no way to turn OFF tapping with two fingers triggering a right click and maintain tapping with one finger triggering a left click. Setting the parameters manually in the 50-synaptics.conf does not work; they are overridden.

    3) The wifi is really, really flaky, with packet timeout constantly even with very little traffic from me SSHing into the netbook. I tried disabling TKIP and forcing EAS and it still timed out constantly. I also tried various other channels, etc. My guess is the problem is with WPA-- I did not try WEP.

    The CR-48 is definitely not ready for primetime with natty. Until these issues are fixed, I urge anything considering Ubuntu on this netbook to stick with maverick.

    ReplyDelete
  111. rod,

    What's funny is I don't have any of those issues. Everything is working fine in your list, including trackpad functions.

    However, I'm wondering if anyone has found a way to remap the function keys to what they are designed to do (brightness, audio, windows, etc.)?

    That would make this perfect.

    Great job to the original blogger of this...I'm very impressed.

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  112. OK, nevermind. I found it.

    If you want to get your "Function" keys back to the way ChromeOS had them with audio/brightness/etc. control go here:

    http://www.chromeoslounge.com/cr-48-chrome-notebook/1854-using-media-keys-ubuntu.html

    ReplyDelete
  113. Got 3G Verizon to work in Ubuntu...here's how:

    1. Start in ChromeOS (boot to ChromeOS)
    2. Start the Mobile Broadband 3G Verizon connection (assuming you have already registered it)
    3. It doesn't matter if wireless is enabled...as long as the connection for the mobile broadband goes BOLD in the connections.
    4. Reboot into Ubuntu
    5. If you look in connections now you should see "Enable Mobile Broadband" make sure it is checked.
    6. If it doesn't autocreate a connection for you,vgo into Edit Connections, and go to Mobile Broadband and create a connection, leaving the phone number, etc. as defaults.
    7. It should be connected now on 3G...disable wireless to test for sure.

    Works great...but there is one caveat. If you reboot, shut down, put the laptop to sleep...then you will need to boot back into ChromeOS and activate 3G again and reboot again back into Ubuntu.

    ReplyDelete
  114. So I booted my CR-48 to natty this morning after having run it in ChromeOS, and the two-finger scrolling worked fine. I didn't change anything. Maybe chromeos "initializes the hardware" or something?

    The wifi issue is really weird. When I'm VNC'd or SSH'd into the CR-48, the connections drops intermittently. I made a bunch of changes to try to fix this, but the one that I think had the most effect was a hail-mary fix for the ath9k chipset under 2.0.38 (we're running 2.0.32)

    echo "options ath9k nohwcrypt=1" > /etc/modprobe.d/ath9k.conf

    Even with this change, wireless still intermittently times out when I'm VNC/SSHing into the machine, but it seems like it's not as bad as it was before.

    When I'm interactively using the laptop in natty, the wireless is fine. Timeouts ONLY occur when VNC/SSHing into it.

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  115. Multitouch trackpad works fine for me in Natty for a week now. I found the trick: when switching from chromeos to ubuntu, instead of "sudo reboot", do a "sudo poweroff" then power on. Also in ubuntu, make sure check "System Settings" - "Mouse" - "Touchpad" - "Two-finger scrolling".

    Two-finger tap(right click in mouse), two-finger scrolling(both vertical and horizontal), three-finger tap(middle click) work great.

    The downside of this is that the 3G will not work . If you want to use 3G, you have to use "sudo reboot" as posted by The Cleaner above.

    ReplyDelete
  116. This is great, but I have a quick suggestion: would it break anything if you performed an OEM install instead of the standard one for the image? This would let the person installing Ubuntu on their Chromebook set their own default user account/password, hostname, time zone, etc.

    I'm not sure if doing this would break anything, as the OEM install does replace core settings configured during initial loading such as hostname and system time. But I figured it'd be good as a suggestion, to see if it works or not.

    ReplyDelete
  117. I am a noob to this. i recently installed ubuntu 10.10 and ran out of space quickly. i do not have a usb to make a recover and reinstall it with more space. is there another way. i know usb's are cheap, but i have no money whatsoever and only 200 mb of space left within the first couple days of having ubuntu.

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  118. I have edited and shortened this tutorial into a document that can be printed on one page:

    https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wedOFS3bXPLiDvjxrKw3YskpalY3VYB7lE-QsEEUTZY/edit?hl=en_US

    ReplyDelete
  119. My two finger scrolling suddenly started working.. Weird, but I ain't complaining :D

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  120. it keeps telling me permission denied and the one time it said it was successful, it said i already had too much partition when i only have 6.2 gb

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  121. @john "The current developer channel no longer supports qemacs - it has been replaced with vim.
    I put together a guide to use vim to create shortcuts for switching between Ubuntu and Chrome OS here:
    http://cr48.wikispaces.com/Create+shortcuts+for+dual-booting

    Hope this helps."

    I was unable to get to the above site, can you repost here? Thanks

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  122. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  123. edit: proofreading

    Two things:

    First I seem to have figured out something on the mouse. After flopping back and forth between CrOS and Ubuntu, I realized my mouse started acting the fool in ubuntu. I had an unreliable right click and no two finger scroll...arggggh, I thought I had this fixed...rebooted..nothing...reboot to CrOS, reboot back to Ubuntu...still crap...

    Then in ubuntu, I did a full shut down and fresh start up.....wait for it...waiiittt for it.....SUCCESS! Two finger scroll and right click worked again. If youre having problems with your mouse, shut down, dont restart, and then start it back up.

    The mouse will hopefully be fully functional. I lose the mouse every time I switch between CrOS and Ubuntu without a shutdown.

    Secondly, I found a cached copy of the site I referenced from John in my earlier post. Using this site I was able to switch between CrOS and Ubuntu using the simplified commands John provided. I do not believe Johns trick creates the mouse problem, now that I think about it, i lose the mouse in ubuntu every time I switched back to CrOS.

    Here is a link to a cached version of the original wikispace: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:J8zi4Pm4AwEJ:cr48.wikispaces.com/Cr-48%2Bkeyboard%2Bshortcuts+short+cuts+dual+boot+cr48&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com

    ReplyDelete
  124. I installed Natty with this tutorial, and it works flawlessly, so thanks! But, I was hoping to use the 2.6.38 kernel. I switched to the dev channel on chromeos and in chromeos, the kernel shows up as 2.6.38.3+ after the update, however in ubuntu, it still shows as 2.6.32 . It was my belief that they were sharing the same kernel, I was wondering is there some way to get ubuntu to use the 2.6.38 at this stage? And, if I reinstall ubuntu, using this tutorial, now that I have chromeos using 2.6.38, would it then use 2.6.38?

    ReplyDelete
  125. edit: proofreading

    Two things:

    First I seem to have figured out something on the mouse. After flopping back and forth between CrOS and Ubuntu, I realized my mouse started acting the fool in ubuntu. I had an unreliable right click and no two finger scroll...arggggh, I thought I had this fixed...rebooted..nothing...reboot to CrOS, reboot back to Ubuntu...still crap...

    Then in ubuntu, I did a full shut down and fresh start up.....wait for it...waiiittt for it.....SUCCESS! Two finger scroll and right click worked again. If youre having problems with your mouse, shut down, dont restart, and then start it back up.

    The mouse will hopefully be fully functional. I lose the mouse every time I switch between CrOS and Ubuntu without a shutdown.

    Secondly, I found a cached copy of the site I referenced from John in my earlier post. Using this site I was able to switch between CrOS and Ubuntu using the simplified commands John provided. I do not believe Johns trick creates the mouse problem, now that I think about it, i lose the mouse in ubuntu every time I switched back to CrOS.

    Here is a link to a cached version of the original wikispace: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:J8zi4Pm4AwEJ:cr48.wikispaces.com/Cr-48%2Bkeyboard%2Bshortcuts+short+cuts+dual+boot+cr48&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com

    ReplyDelete
  126. The Cr-48 Wiki is up and running again. The guide to creating shortcuts between Chrome OS and Ubuntu is here:

    http://cr-48.wikispaces.com/Dual+Boot+Shortcuts

    Sorry about the temporary outage.

    ReplyDelete
  127. Bloomer's method for enabling two-finger scrolling didn't work for me.

    I did find another way to get two-finger scrolling and other multitouch features of the trackpad working properly in Ubuntu, however. It involves simply installing a patched version of the Synaptics drivers.

    A guide with a link to the patched touchpad drivers is available here:

    http://cr-48.wikispaces.com/Fix+Touchpad+in+Ubuntu

    Hope this helps.

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  128. How do I do this with the files posted at http://code.google.com/p/cr-48-ubuntu/downloads/list?num=100&start=0 ?

    I'm not going to be able to have an internet connexion with my Cr48 when installing Ubuntu, but I can download the files at work. Any way to do this, or am I SOL?

    ReplyDelete
  129. Singing to the choir here, but this is awesome! Installed slick, as advertised, and not I can have my dropbox files too, locally! Seems to be adequately fast, though I have only used for a couple hours. Thank you!!!

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  130. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  131. thanks. this worked with the samsung series 5 chromebook.

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  132. Any information on getting the gps etc working when ubuntu is installed this way? I find tons of guides but they ALL say "for clean ubuntu not easy ubuntu" or something along those lines.
    This is the main reason I wanted ubuntu, I wanted to install gpsdrive and use the gps in the gobi2000 chip.

    BTW, thanks for all the work on the script and the rebooting commands. It is really nice to be able to use both ChromeOS and Ubuntu.

    ReplyDelete
  133. Ok everything worked fine but I just want ChromeOS back with all the partions back the way they came. I've switched the switch to boot back to ChromeOS but how do I get the partitions back to the default settings?

    ReplyDelete
  134. kindofabuzz: First paragraph in this post, heh.

    " Following this guide will destroy your existing Ubuntu install including all your data! If you have 10.10 installed but wish to start clean (perhaps with a larger partition size, something the script now easily supports), you should do a USB Recovery of Chrome OS."

    ReplyDelete
  135. @John Doe, well yeah I knew I could do that. I was just wondering if there was a script to resize the partitions to the way they were.

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  136. OK, so I had Ubuntu installed on my CR48 pefectly for ages using this script. I just had to do a factory reset though and am trying to run the script again and now im getting "Syntax error: newline unexpected" when trying to run hnkxo. Any suggestions?

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  137. Frank Jaegar asked if it would be possible to write a similar script to do this install with Joli OS. I'm curious about the same. I currently have Joli running on my CR-48 but would like to have the device boot into ChromeOS with the option of switching to Joli when need be.

    ReplyDelete
  138. Repost: OK, so I had Ubuntu installed on my CR48 pefectly for ages using this script. I just had to do a factory reset though and am trying to run the script again and now im getting "Syntax error: newline unexpected" when trying to run hnkxo. Any suggestions?

    Anybody?

    ReplyDelete
  139. I've tried this four times now and I'm not seeing Ubuntu. It just boots Chrome OS. Assuming Ubuntu is installed correctly, is there any way to force it to boot?

    ReplyDelete
  140. You try

    sudo cgpt add -i 6 -P 5 -S 1 /dev/sda

    in chromeos?

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  141. Hi John. Thanks for the reply. Yeah, I tried that but it just boots Chrome. This is on a brand new Samsung Series 5 by the way running Google Chrome 12.0.742.105 (cros: 433.114-11.06.14). Not sure if this is any different from the hardware and software this script was tested on. Apparently some others have got this working on the Series 5, so I tried using the rescue disk to restore to the factory presets, switching off developer mode, and trying again, without any luck. I did notice, however, that after restoring, I wasn't prompted to update the OS like I was the very first time I started it up. Perhaps I'll try to find a rescue disk that reverts back to an old version of Chrome OS and trying from there.

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  142. Casey i had the same problem, to fix it u need to replace the stock chromeos bios by following the instructions here: http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices/samsung-series-5-chromebook#TOC-Entering-Developer-Mode

    Developer-mode BIOS

    If you want to make modifications to the Chrome OS filesystem or boot your own version of Chromium OS, you'll need to activate the second level of developer access. You do this by running a special command from the command line shell. You first log in with the username 'chronos' (if you've set a shell password, you'll be prompted for it). Then you switch to the 'root' account, and run the command to install the developer-mode BIOS. For example:

    localhost login: chronos
    chronos@localhost $ sudo bash
    localhost chronos # chromeos-firmwareupdate --mode=todev

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  143. Thanks aamzalag, that solved it. :)

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  144. +1 to what Thomas said (I'm back :P) anyone have any ideas as to how to get this working with JoliOS? If someone could point me in the right direction, I wouldn't mind hosting the files somehow...

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  145. Thank you sir. Worked like a charm. You rock!!!

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  146. Hi all,
    Has anyone devised a modified version of this script to work with an upgraded 40gb SSD?

    I'm trying to allocated 36gb of space to ubuntu so I'm not so cloud dependent.

    Also, thanks for the original script. I'm posting this from my Samsung Series 5 on Ubuntu <3

    ReplyDelete
  147. So is it normal if its just on a black screen as its downloading? The blue button is glowing, but i see no bars

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  148. Is there a forum dedicated to toying with ChromeOS?

    Anyone know how a better method resolve the drag and drop issue with the touchpad? That's my biggest annoyance other than not being able to control the brightness using the media keys at the top (KeyTouch from the ChromeOSLounge link did not work too well).

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  149. Is there anybody that could help me recompile the existing chrome kernel on the samsung series 5 to work with ubuntu nbr? I cant get make_dev_ssd or qemacs to run properly... and thats the only thing I'm having trouble with.

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  150. Running Samsung Series 5 Chromebook... it automatically updated Chrome to 12.0.742.113.

    Followed the instructions twice and have no luck. The files download and then after running the script the 2nd time, it goes through and reboots but right into Chrome.

    Any assistance or ideas would be awesome. Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  151. This is great but can someone please tell me if there's a way to install Ubuntu on the Samsung Series 5 Chromebooks? Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  152. You must enter the second level of developer mode first.

    Try:


    localhost login: chronos
    chronos@localhost $ sudo bash
    localhost chronos # chromeos-firmwareupdate --mode=todev

    Then re-run the script.

    ReplyDelete
  153. @Sobo do you do that for the first time? downloading the script? Or let the script download and the 2nd time around, enter the 2nd level of dev mode and then re-run that script?

    ReplyDelete
  154. @Sobo when I enter that command... this is what I get back...

    Starting firmware updater (od=todev)...
    Checking Alex firmware updates...
    ERROR: Unknown mode: od=todev
    ERROR: ./updater.sh failed.


    Any idea?

    ReplyDelete
  155. I figured it out... there are two dashes and not one infront of mode=todev

    ReplyDelete
  156. Can anyone help me recreate the script for my 40gb SSD? :( it's being wasted on chromeos!

    ReplyDelete
  157. Works on the Acer Chromebook WiFi model. Thanks to the author for putting this together. I've never done anything with Linux or Ubuntu before in my life, and with a little bit of research on commands and such, I managed to get this running without any troubles at all.

    btw... Acer chromebook dev switch is behind the battery, and the Samsung chromebook dev switch is in the sim card area compartment.

    Also, make sure to activate the developer firmware before you try this method by entering

    localhost login: chronos
    chronos@localhost $ sudo bash
    localhost chronos # chromeos-firmwareupdate --mode=todev

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  158. Thnx but I'm not sure if I set it to default os because I still get that chrome os developer thing when i first turn on the cr-48. can someone tell me if this is normal.

    ReplyDelete
  159. I have a question, and I apologize if this was answered above. As you said the account Username and Password are both "user". If I wanted to, could I create a new Admin account with a Username of my choice, and a secure Password? Could I then remove the "User User" account and have it all work?

    Thanks for any help.

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  160. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  161. Jay,
    I installed Ubuntu 11.04 using the usb method and it's working great. I'm having an issue after several Ubuntu updates it is still booting the original 'Linux 2.6.32.26+drm33.12' instead of the version 'Linux 2.6.38-10-generic' as listed in /boot/grub/grub.cfg. I am using the aliases to switch between chrome & ubuntu but was wondering if there is a way to boot the newer kernel?

    Thanx for any help on this,
    Dennis

    ReplyDelete
  162. @DennisLfromGA I'm not Jay Lee but I will advise this.

    You don't really want the newer kernel booting because the install is relying on modules compiled against the 2.6.32.26 from ChromeOS. Also the system doesn't actually boot using Grub but rather it boots using the same system that ChromeOS uses and it's kernel is stored in the KERN-C partition.

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  163. @TheEnigma06

    That's what I did but keep in mind the root user is disabled so you will want to check the Advanced settings and go to the middle tab (forget the name specifically) and make note of what options are selected there. Then go to the new user and set it exactly the same way. New users are just desktop users by default and have no admin rights but this will help ensure that the admin rights are transferred over. Don't delete the user account until you are sure everything is good on the new one.

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  164. Holy crap!!! pinch to zoom is working with latest ubuntu update!!!

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  165. shinji257 - Thanks for the info.

    I was hoping there was a way of updating the KERN-C image with the newer kernels but, like you say, it's not really using grub I guess it would have to be a manual effort and may possibly 'break' the Ubuntu load at the least.
    I guess I'll just try to decline any kernel updates in the future and just update the other software if possible.

    Thanx again,
    Dennis

    ReplyDelete
  166. do you have to have ubuntu on a flash drive or just enter that url?

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  167. I have all the files (ubuntu-1104.bin[aa-bz].bz2 & ubuntu-1104-install.sh) on a flash drive. I just copied the install script to the cr-48 and ran it.

    > Ulrich said...
    > do you have to have ubuntu on a flash drive or > > just enter that url?

    ReplyDelete
  168. Need some help here guys, got ubuntu 11.04 on the machine, and now following two reboots I am back in ChromeOS...trying the command to switch back...I get "Unknown Command Sudo". I am still in developer mode, and I just had Ubuntu like 10 minutes ago. Can someone please help me? Don't want to have to try this whole guide again, as I don't have a recovery flash drive to start fresh :/

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  169. For those who want to use this installer after upgrading to a 40 GB hard drive,it would appear you can just change three lines in the script as indicated below. If I'm wrong, I'll post again here.

    Basically, Jay Lee wrote two commands on one line, so rather than run "wget http://goo.gl/hnkxo; sudo sh hnkxo"

    run

    =================
    wget http://goo.gl/hnkxo
    =================

    That gets the script onto your computer. Then edit the script with the built-in text editor, which is vi in any new version of ChromeOS:

    =================
    vi hnkxo
    =================

    find the lines below, and change them as indicated. If you're new to vi, google for some good tutorials.

    =================
    read -p "Enter the size in gigabytes you want to reserve for Ubuntu. Acceptable range is 5 to 10 but 9 is the recommended maximum:

    -- change to --

    read -p "Enter the size in gigabytes you want to reserve for Ubuntu. Acceptable range is 5 to 31 but 30 is the recommended maximum:
    =================

    =================
    if [ $ubuntu_size -lt 5 -o $ubuntu_size -gt 10 ]

    -- change to --

    if [ $ubuntu_size -lt 5 -o $ubuntu_size -gt 31 ]
    =================

    =================
    echo "\n\nThat number is out of range. Enter a number 5 through 10\n\n"

    -- change to --

    echo "\n\nThat number is out of range. Enter a number 5 through 31\n\n"
    =================

    then run

    =================
    sudo sh hnkxo
    =================

    after that, you can follow the directions as Jay Lee wrote them. When your computer reboots, you can run his original command, the script will skip the partitioning subroutine, so don't worry about modifying it a second time. Just run both commands together:

    =================
    wget http://goo.gl/hnkxo; sudo sh hnkxo
    =================

    Now here's what I don't understand. Ubuntu actually says its a 32 GB ext4 partition, but when I run df in ubuntu, it says root is on 5 GB. Anybody know how to fix that?

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  170. @Neils: nice tutorial. Regarding the size issue, sounds like you missed step #11 to resize the ext4 filesystem to fit the partition.

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  171. @Jay Lee

    yes, I didn't know how to do that from within ChromeOS. In fact, I came back here specifically to report how I ended up doing it. Do you know how to do it from within ChromeOS?

    @ everyone else
    Like Jay Lee said, you have to resize the file system. In fact, regardless of what size you pick in Jay Lee's script, besides 5, you'll have to resize the filesystem to use that space. Hopefully there's an easy way to do that from within ChromeOS. But I don't know how, so here's what I did:

    1) flash the ROM http://cr-48.wikispaces.com/Flash+BIOS (make sure to save the backup copy of your factory rom, as directed, to gmail)
    2) On a different system, use Ubuntu's startup disk creator to build a startup flash drive.
    3) Put that Ubuntu drive in the Cr-48 USB port and reboot, holding down f2 (=>) to get into the InsydeH2O BIOS settings.
    4) Right-click across the top menu to "boot" then down to "legacy" and make sure the boot order starts with USB
    5) Escape, saving settings if needed, and boot into the USB stick.
    6) Select "try ubuntu"
    7) Verify the filesystem works: run "sudo e2fsck /dev/sda7"
    8) then "sudo resize2fs /dev/sda7" It should tell you the filesystem has been expanded to some number of blocks. Now, you have a roomy filesystem, but you won't be able to boot into it, because ChromeOS isn't going to let you use that dev console (ctrl-alt-f2) because your ROM is untrusted. So you have to put your factory ROM back in. So, with your Ubuntu startup flash drive system still running...
    9) Use the Ubuntu Software Center to install flashrom
    10) recover your factory ROM from gmail
    11) re-install that ROM: flashrom -w backup.bin

    FWIW: I already had Ubuntu installed on my Cr-48 and I got the bigger drive because I wanted more space for interesting things on ubuntu. I tried doing some dd copies of my old Ubuntu system onto a backup drive, and restoring from those, but weird things failed, like the screen backlight turned completely off, the wi-fi driver was corrupted, etc. So I ended up rebuilding my Ubuntu from scratch, only selectively restoring certain things like my .emacs, from my backed-up home folder.

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  172. oooooohhhhhhhhh. I didn't realize you could resize a running FS. Never mind. Well, I'll leave the notes above here anyway, as they may be useful for other things. And, if anyone knows how to move an Ubuntu properly from on Cr-48 disk to another, please let me know.

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  173. anyone has problem with internal speaker? no sound, but when I connect headphones sound is ok. Right after the install the sound was ok, looks like the problem occurred after installing updates.

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  174. just to complete my previous comment, I somehow fixed the problem by replacing /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf by the /etc/modprobe.d/alsa.conf from chromeos (using USB memory stick for transfer). Also I did not mention I have Samsung Chromebook Series 5. Now everything works as expected, and thanks for the instructions Jay!

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  175. Can someone explain in detail on how to enable
    the internals speakers on a Series 5?

    Only the headphones work in Ubuntu:(

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  176. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  177. FYI - It looks like if you do this on a ChromeOS release that uses 2.6.38 then that's what you will get. There is also a possibility you might not be able to change the brightness. For some reason xbacklight fails to detect the screen as something that can be adjusted and /proc/acpi/video/ is missing.

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  178. Is there any way to set Page Up/Down to the Alt+Up/Down keys in Ubuntu?

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  179. Looks like /proc/acpi/video/* is missing on 2.6.38 (for those of us that did this guide on 13.x and higher) but there is /sys/class/backlight/i915_backlight/. At least there is in ChromeOS itself. I verified that the former one is missing in ChromeOS itself as well and this actually breaks xbacklight. Is there an app that can control via /sys/class/backlight instead?

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  180. Same, I'd like to know how to pull the alsa-base file. I can't get the audio to work through the internal speakers.

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  181. The way I did it: in ubuntu run "sudo cgpt add -i 6 -P 0 -S 1 /dev/sda" and reboot to chromeos, enter shell (basically steps 2 and 3 in this tutorial), copy /etc/modprobe.d/alsa.conf to USB stick (accessible somewhere in /mnt or /media). Run "sudo cgpt add -i 6 -P 5 -S 1 /dev/sda" and reboot back to ubuntu. Now replace the /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf by the file on your USB. I think it's not possible to access chromeos partition from ubuntu directly, or is it?

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  182. Hi, I am trying this on a Samsung Series 5, the script downloaded the files, when it completed (or at least I think so) it tried to reboot (again, I think it was at this point following the guide) and then went into kernel panic.
    The error is:
    "Kernel panic - not syncing: dm-verify failure: device:8:7 error:-13 block:0 message:integrity failure" ...followed by other lines I do not know what are about. I can paste them here if they could be of any help.
    Could you help me?
    Thank you in advance

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  183. Amazing script. Absolutely incredible. I have Ubuntu on my Samsung Chromebook. Thank you so much!

    Monte, I've got the same laptop and everything worked great. Try to reset everything and try again I guess.

    For anybody looking to make switching between OS easier the qemacs script doesn't work anymore because chrome has switched to the vi editor. Google vi and linux, it's weird at first but not rocket science from a windows user point of view.

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  184. @hypertyper: I have a doubt, after the downloading process and the first reboot I get a progress bar "restoring something" I don't really remember, did you have this too? I am trying the whole thing again, after factory reset...
    In your case everything went as said in the guide? You did start in dev mode as said here http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices/samsung-series-5-chromebook right?

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  185. @monte: Everything went as advertised. After he had downloaded the screen was black for quite a while but I just left him be. Make sure you go into dev mode and then run the script which puts you in it all the way.

    I can't get the sound to work. I copied the alsa-conf file into alsa-base.conf (different file names?!?) but it hasn't made any difference. If anybody has any instruction for getting the sound to work on the Samsung chromebook I'd appreciate it.

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  186. I did it 3 times now... it always reboots and goes back to Chrome.

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  187. It should do that once after it clears stuff. The second time round when you start the script he downloads stuff and then goes into Ubuntu for two boots as advertised.

    How far do you get with your installs? I have the same machine and it worked out fine...

    Sound is also working now. Yay. The files that are being copied have different names, I can confirm that. I copied the file off of chrome, then copy pasted it into the file that's in ubuntu via sudo gedit ...

    So happy!

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  188. I just did as the guide says, the only difference is that I did not reboot, I shut down the chromebook and started to execute the command.

    I've tried another time after having logged in using bash (I know it might be wrong), nothing. I arrive at the sad computer image and aftert 30" chromeos boots up.

    Is there a log file or something about the whole process I can inspect?

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  189. *phew* This took me a lot more than I'd admit :D... I'm a happy user now, I wasn't executing this: chromeos-firmwareupdate --mode=todev
    I've discovered an error message about write permission by removing the reboot command at the end of the script.

    So happy too now! ;D

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  190. This is the link (from the broken link above) for the keytouch CR48 layout. Everything but the brightness keys are working for me (Samsung S5), which is what I'm after. They worked for a moment then stopped...

    https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B9YWmZa0f3JyMzVmNjQ1ODItMGRhZi00NjlmLWFhMTktMWE4YWY5ZjM3Zjlk&hl=en

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  191. Is it safe to run the Ubuntu upgrades it wants me to install?

    It's all going wrong now. I reinstalled and brightness keys again worked with the new layout and keytouch, then randomly stopped working. This time I couldn't get the sound to work at any point. So frustrating!

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  192. First of all THANK YOU for this script. I have cr-48 and a samsung s running ubuntu!

    This is for anyone that goes process of installing only to see a ubuntu background but no controls or operating system. Basically, the startup hangs.

    I believe it was a result of the download script running and the automatic power saver kicking in. This I believe causes some bad transfers. The result is a hung ubuntu.

    I removed all the *.txt files in the download area and re-ran the script hnkxo and babysat it touching the touchpad to avoid sleep (i believe there is a command to disable sleep) and the download and install completes successfully!

    Thanks again,
    Ralph

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  193. I've come up with a solution to the brightness key problem on the Samsung Chromebook:

    http://www.codetopf.com/2011/09/samsung-chromebook-ubuntu-fixing_23.html

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  194. Monte i am having the exact same issue as you. download the script then ubuntu downloads and seems to install all fine but then my samsung series 5 just reboots into chrome. ive tried 5 times ive tried 5 times everytime it boots into chrome and not ubuntu . im so close yet so far lol.

    can you please explain to me what you did to fix your issue and get the computer to restart into ubuntu?

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