Chrome OS

Last updated: 2019 November 27
  1. Setting up xiwi
  2. Run graphical Crouton/chroot
  3. Run Crouton/chroot shell
  4. Run a single linux program in a window (already in a chroot shell)
  5. Remount a card/drive with execute permissions
  6. Set locales
  7. Fixing apt-get failure

Setting up xiwi

  • Add it to an existing crouton installation: sudo sh ~/Downloads/crouton -u -t xiwi
  • Install the Chrome extension
  • Inherit your XFCE settings by adding this line to your user’s .xiwirc file (this file might not exist yet): xfsettingsd&

Run graphical Crouton/chroot

In a totally separate view:

sudo startxfce4 -X xorg

Use Ctrl + Alt + Shift + ← and Ctrl + Alt + Shift + → to switch between Chrome OS and Linux.

In a tab/window within Chrome OS:

This requires that you have xiwi installed as part of your crouton setup and the crouton integration extension installed in Chrome.

sudo startxfce4 -X xiwi

(from Crouton Wiki

Run Crouton/chroot shell

This gives you a full linux shell that you can run programs from and install things with apt

Get the names of your chroots:

sudo edit-chroot -a

Mount the chroot and enter the shell: (using whatever chrootname you got from the first command).

sudo enter-chroot -n chrootname

If you have a single chroot, you should be able to just do sudo enter-chroot.

(from Crouton Command Cheat Sheet)

Run a single linux program in a window (already in a chroot shell) 

xiwi [program-name]

Some programs require an additional flag to run properly, such as Sublime text editor: xiwi subl -w

Remount a card/drive with execute permissions

I ran into this when trying to run scripts that were stored on my Chromebook’s SD card.

sudo mount -o remount,exec /media/removable/Card

(or wherever the mountpoint of your card/USB device is)

(from Unix StackExchange)

Set locales

To be minimalistic, locales are not set by default in Chrome OS/crouton. This can cause a problem with filenames or characters not displaying in terminals (or terminals crashing). You can set the locales to stop the madness.

sudo locale-gen en_US
sudo locale-gen en_US.utf8
sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

(First select all, then next select the default as en_US)

It should be reconfigured on reboot.

Fixing apt-get failure

I started getting a segfault when I try to run any apt or apt-get commands in crouton on my Chromebook. So I couldn’t update or install. This GitHub issue comment provided a workaround. It’s not pretty, but it works. Basically, you manually download and re-install apt, then update and install dependencies.