Tag Archives: chromebook

CLI, Hardware, OS

Install Linux on Chromebook Pixel 2 (Samus)

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I’ve run crouton on my Chromebook Pixel 2  (2015, codename Samus) for some time now but I’ve found myself wanting more. Virtualbox, kernel access, graphics, and more don’t perform well in a chroot. Thankfully it’s actually pretty easy to dual boot Chrome OS and Linux on your chromebook thanks to chrx (pronounced “marshmallow”?)

Installation

The first part of installation is identical to setting up crouton:

  • Enter developer mode:
    Press ESC, Refresh, power simultaneously (when the chromebook is on)

    • Every time you power on the chromebook from now on you’ll get a scary screen. Press CTRL-D to bypass it (or wait 30 seconds)
    • If you hit space on this screen instead of CTRL+D it will powerwash (nuke) your data
      A scary screen will pop up saying the OS is missing or damaged. Press CTRL D, then press Enter when the OS verification screen comes up.
  • Wait several minutes for developer mode to be installed. Note it will wipe your device to do this.

Enable SeaBIOS:

Open up a shell (CTRL + ALT + T, shell, enter) and enter the following

sudo crossystem dev_boot_usb=1 dev_boot_legacy=1

and reboot.

Next, download and run the chrx script twice. The first run will partition and powerwash your system; the second run will actually install GalliumOS (or Ubuntu or Fedora) alongside ChromeOS.

cd ; curl -Os https://chrx.org/go && sudo sh go

reboot after partition, run shell again. You can specify a number of arguments to the go script; I wanted to use Cinnamon on Fedora so these are the ones I used:

cd ; curl -Os https://chrx.org/go && sudo sh go -d fedora -e cinnamon -r latest -H <hostname> -U <username> -Z <timezone>

Fedora took quite a long time to install (1 hour in my case.) Just let the script do its thing. Once complete you can reboot and press CTRL + D for chromeOS or CTRL + L for Linux.

After that, reboot into your new linux environment!

Cleaning up

There were a few samus-specific things I needed to do.

Locale

For some reason my locale was set to an African country.  Correct by doing this:  (thanks to here) I added SELinux commands because for some reason I was getting permission denied errors.

sudo setenforce 0
localectl set-locale LANG=en_US.utf8
sudo setenforce 1

Audio doesn’t work (no sound)

This issue stems from the fact that the sound card is not presented as the first available card. The system defaults to HDMI sound instead. Fortunately this page has instructions on how to fix this. If you’re running GalliumOS default you can follow the instructions from the link above. In my case I had to get a bit creative.

  1. Download the samus patches from here
    wget https://github.com/GalliumOS/galliumos-samus/archive/master.zip
  2. Extract subfolders inside said zip file to root directory
  3. Reboot
  4. run the following: 
    1. cp -r /etc/skel/.config $HOME
sudo samus-alsaenable-speakers
sudo samus-touch-reset

Success! You can now dual boot between Full blown Linux and ChromeOS on your Chromebook Pixel.

Touchpad / touchscreen stop working after resume

Occasionally my touchpad and touchscreen stop responding after resuming from sleep. The galliumOS-samus fix mentioned above has a handy reset script that fixes this. Simply run:

sudo samus-touch-reset

and your touch functionality is restored. I bound this command to a key shortcut to make things easier.

Virtualbox won’t start

After installing virtualbox I got a strange error message when trying to start VMs:

Failed to load VMMR0.r0 (VERR_SUPLIB_OWNER_NOT_ROOT)

I found this mention saying that /usr has to be owned by root. Easy enough of a fix:

sudo chown root:root /usr/
OS

Unable to update crouton after installing VirtualBox

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When trying to update crouton I kept getting the following error message:

Preparing to unpack .../linux-image-3.8.11_20150314_amd64.deb ...
Ok, aborting, since modules for this image already exist.
dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/linux-image-3.8.11_20150314_amd64.deb (--unpack):

After some digging I found this thread which explains how to fix it. The source of the problem was the fact that I had installed a modified kernel to allow VirtualBox to work properly. The way to update crouton is to remove the repository for that kernel

rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/crouton-packages.list

After removing that repository the update completed successfully.

 

Networking, OS

Use OpenVPN from within crouton chroot

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Update: Google released a ChromeOS update that broke the openvpn script. Find the updated version here.

Update 3/29/17: Added a DNS suffix line to fix broken DNS

I posted a little while ago about how to get openvpn working on your chromebook. That guide required that you run openvpn outside your chroot on the chromebook instance itself.

Lately I’ve been really feeling the need to have openvpn run within a crouton chroot instead. The solution is to take the script from the post above and divide it into two parts. One part you will still have to run outside your chroot but you will only have to do it once on each reboot. The other part can safely live inside your chroot.

First, on your chromebook itself (not in a chroot) make a small script to tell the shill service not to kill tun0:

sudo echo "
#!/bin/bash

#Allows the tun0 device to function
sudo stop shill
sudo start shill BLACKLISTED_DEVICES=tun0" > /usr/local/bin/shill

chmod +x /usr/local/bin/shill

Next, create this script within your chroot. Be sure to modify the environment variables to suit your setup.

#!/bin/bash

CONF_DIR="/path/to/directory/openvpn/config/is/in"
CONF_FILE="FILENAME_OF_OVPN_FILE"
NAMESERVER="IP_OF_DNS_SERVER_YOU_WANT_TO_USE"
SEARCH="DNS_SUFFIX_YOU_WANT_TO_USE"

cd "$CONF_DIR"

# Add google DNS on top of current ones, since openvpn command does not do it
sudo sed -i "1s/^/# new DNS\nsearch $SEARCH\nnameserver $NAMESERVER\n# old DNS\n/" /etc/resolv.conf

sudo openvpn --config "$CONF_FILE" --dev tun0

# When ctrl-c is hit remove tun0 and cleanup the DNS
sudo openvpn --rmtun --dev tun0
sudo sed -i '/# new DNS/,/# old DNS/d' /etc/resolv.conf
trap 2

Voila, we now have openvpn working inside our chroots again.

CLI, OS

Configure VMWare View Smartcard in Ubuntu

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Recently I’ve been required to use a smart card to log into some servers I manage. Configuring my Linux Mint 17.2 machine to pass my smartcard through to those machines via VMWare View has not been straightforward. This guide will walk you through how to get Smartcard redirection to work with VMWare View in Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr, which Linux Mint 17.2 is based off of. Enjoy.

Procedure

  1. Install the latest version of the VMWare View client (distro versions are often quite out of date) from here 
    chmod +x VMware-Horizon-Client-3.5.0-2999900.x64.bundle 
sudo ./VMware-Horizon-Client-3.5.0-2999900.x64.bundle
  2. Install necessary packages for CommonAccessCard (thanks to this helpful ubuntu writeup) 
    sudo apt-get install libpcsclite1 pcscd pcsc-tools
  3. (re)Start the pcscd daemon 
    sudo /etc/init.d/pcscd restart
  4. Ensure your smartcard reader is properly identified by running this command: 
    pcsc_scan

    If that command is stuck on “Waiting for the first reader…” then you need to install your smartcard drivers. If it sees your smartcard, skip this next step and proceed to step 6.

  5. Install your smartcard driver. This process is different for each card. For the card reader I have (the Identive SCR3500 A Contact Reader), I was able to obtain the drivers after much difficulty from here. The link to the drivers itself are here (alternate link). In my case I was able to untar and run the install script, which worked beautifully.
  6. Install 32 bit compatibility libraries (only applicable for 64 bit installations) thanks to this site for the answer and this one for clarification 
    sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y libxml2:i386 libssl1.0.0:i386 libXtst6:i386 libudev1:i386 libpcsclite1:i386 libtheora0:i386 libv4l-0:i386 libpulse0:i386
sudo ln -sf /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libudev.so.1 /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libudev.so.0
sudo ln -sf /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libssl.so.1.0.0 /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libssl.so.1.0.1
sudo ln -sf /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libcrypto.so.1.0.0 /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libcrypto.so.1 
sudo ln -sf /lib/$(arch)-linux-gnu/libudev.so.1 /lib/$(arch)-linux-gnu/libudev.so.0
  7. (re)Start the vmware-USBArbitrator and vmware-view-USBD services 
    sudo /etc/init.d/vmware-USBArbitrator start
sudo /etc/init.d/vmware-view-USBD start

    For some reason after I did all of this the vmware-view binary was nowhere to be found. It was quite strange. I fixed this issue by removing and re-installing the view client:

    sudo ./VMware-Horizon-Client-3.5.0-2999900.x64.bundle -u vmware-horizon-client
sudo ./VMware-Horizon-Client-3.5.0-2999900.x64.bundle

    After doing this the binary was there as expected.

  8. Create a config file to instruct the view client to redirect your smartcard reader. 
    echo 'viewusb.IncludeFamily = "smart-card"' >> /etc/vmware/config
echo 'viewusb.AllowSmartcard = "true"' >> /etc/vmware/config

    There is no graphical option to pass devices through like there is in the Windows client. I spent more time than I’d like to admit on this step. It turns out the name of the file is important – it has to simply be called “config.” Place this config file in ~/.vmware (it can also be placed in /etc/vmware/config and/or /usr/lib/vmware/config)

  9. Start vmware-view and enjoy your new smartcard capabilities 
    vmware-view

Troubleshooting

If it’s not working, make sure that these services are started

  • pcscd
  • vmware-USBArbitrator
  • vmware-view-USBD

One of these services have been known to crash if you attempt to connect while your smartcard is plugged in. The dance to get around this is to unplug your card reader, re-launch the above services, launch vmware-view, connect to your view server, and then only after you’ve logged in, plug in your card reader.

 

Update 2/25/2016: Here is the script I use to make my chromebook work beautifully for remoting into work:

sudo /etc/init.d/pcscd restart
sudo /etc/init.d/vmware-USBArbitrator restart
sudo /etc/init.d/vmware-view-USBD restart
setres 1600 1024
vmware-view
setres 2560 1700