A lot of people (including me!) have this wonderful little machine which has recently hit AUE. So what does one do with it? The following is compiled from posts I made on the chromeos subreddit . There is a gist on how to setup this device to boot a kernel compiled using Debian. After that you can continue with Debian installation since it supports ARM pretty well. You need to tweak it to work better. Arch Linux for ARM has a build for the ASS C100P which had some issues with booting in the past with that but they have since (I think!) been fixed. It is possible to build the newest ChromiumOS and install it. As far as I understand it, you need a spare machine with a 64-bit x86 processor (or equivalent cloud resources) to build ChromeOS. Using crouton is another option. However, ChromeOS is using up your precious 2/4G of RAM. So using crouton to build a kernel (as in 1) may make things bit better.

AUE Machines (specifically ASUS C100P)

kapil

A lot of people (including me!) have this wonderful little machine which has recently hit AUE. So what does one do with it?

The following is compiled from posts I made on the chromeos subreddit.

There is a gist on how to setup this device to boot a kernel compiled using Debian. After that you can continue with Debian installation since it supports ARM pretty well. You need to tweak it to work better.
Arch Linux for ARM has a build for the ASS C100P which had some issues with booting in the past with that but they have since (I think!) been fixed.
It is possible to build the newest ChromiumOS and install it. As far as I understand it, you need a spare machine with a 64-bit x86 processor (or equivalent cloud resources) to build ChromeOS.
Using crouton is another option. However, ChromeOS is using up your precious 2/4G of RAM. So using crouton to build a kernel (as in 1) may make things bit better.

KMyers

#3 is the best option IMHO

I may be able to donate some compute resources to build ChromiumOS from it like I do with the builds for the GPD Pocket if there is enough of a demand.

kapil

Thanks for the offer.

I managed to find a machine on which to do a build which is running as I type. However, I could not find a way to enable all the Google API's that you suggest. Is there an update on what API's are needed or perhaps you can give a pointer on where one can find out what API's need to be enabled?

kapil

Found the link to this info. I was confusing "chromium-os-dev@chromium.org" (which I was already subscribed to) with "chromium-dev@chromium.org" which is the subscription needed to work on Chromium OS!

After that the link explains the API keys that have to be added.

KMyers

kapil glad to hear

kapil

The build for "arm-generic" went through without a hitch. However this did not work since the C100P requires the Mail driver for graphics. There is an open source version of this driver, but Google's overlay for the "veyron_minnie" board (of the C100P) seems to depend on the non-free driver. So it does not work for ChromiumOS.

So one has to figure out from the interwebs how to get this replacement driver working inside ChromiumOS. Presumably one has to create a new overlay which uses the free driver.

kapil

Should have been clearer. The term "does not work" means that the "build_packages" fails with an error saying that the Mail driver has been masked by Google's Terms of Service license. The precise error is:

!!! All ebuilds that could satisfy "media-libs/mali-drivers-bin" for /build/veyron_minnie/ have been masked.
!!! One of the following masked packages is required to complete your request:
- media-libs/mali-drivers-bin-1.20_p101::veyron (masked by: Google-TOS license(s))
A copy of the 'Google-TOS' license is located at '/mnt/host/source/src/third_party/chromiumos-overlay/licenses/Google-TOS'.

kapil

Got some help from Vincent Palatin on chromium-os-dev@chromium.org.

Apparently one needs to indicate that the builder is accepting this license with:

export ACCEPT_LICENSE=Google-TOS

Rebulding after making this change.

kapil

Finally got around to booting the image that I built. I am typing this from within the image which is booted from USB.

Some immediate issues are that the touchscreen and wifi do not work! I imagined that accepting the licenses etc. would mean that it would copy over the necessary firmware. Clearly, that is not the case. In hindsight it should have been obvious. Google does not have the license (from the OEM) to distribute the code except for the specific device. So it cannot be "automatically" installed. I suppose I will have to figure out where that resides on the original image and copy it over to the USB image.

Luckily, I had wired ethernet around so I could connect to check the other things are working.

kapil

A quick question. Does the Android support work with non-Google builds of ChromiumOS?

kapil

OK. Got my answer here. The ARC++ container is not included in Chromium-OS.

While the wifi and touch firmware can probably be copied over from the Chromebook image, I am not sure how to do that for ARC++ and whether it will work!

KMyers

kapil that is correct however that might change soon with ARCVM, it is still early but it would allow a AOSP build

kapil

Copying over the files in /lib/firmware and /opt/google/touch got the wifi and touchscreen working.

So option (3) is doable! That's great!

I'm still divided between options (1) and (3) however.

The advantage of (1) is that one can build the kernel on the machine and so, using the Debian repositories and internet, it is self-sufficient.

The advantage of (3) is that no further fine tuning of the OS is required for the multi-touch touch pad and touchscreen. In general, the OS is tuned to the hardware, so it will work better. Also, one can run Debian in a chroot in any case.

kapil

Posted a query about this build on the Chromium OS Dev group.

It looks like the missing Wifi firmware file is being fixed.
Doesn't seem to be an easy fix to getting sommelier on this image.

Meanwhile, I ran into a problem where the new build booted and immediately starting trying to update before letting me log in. I haven't set up a devserver so I don't know why that should happen.

kapil

Success!

Finally managed to get Chromium OS working stably on this device. Followed the instructions of Myers with the following additions:

Used BOARD=veyron_minnie. (Note the underscore!).
Disabled the _DEVSERVER , _AUSERVER, HOME_URL settings. (Not running the servers so far.)
Enabled the user password with ./set_shared_user_password.sh before building packages with ./build_packages.
Ran ./build_packages with the option --nowithdebug. (The debug symbols use too much memory for this device and Chrome crashes repeatedly without this.)
Ran ./build_image to build dev image so that some reasonable command line utilities are available.
Copied /lib/firmware, /opt/google/touch and /opt/google/chrome/pepper from the original root file system of the device into the root file system with ./mount_gpt_image.sh --most-recent. (This is needed for WiFi and touch to work. Flash is deprecated, but still required for some sites!)

After this, the device booted from the USB drive created and I could login etc. After running chromeos-install, the system boots and works almost like before.

No Android support
No Crostini (but it was not there earlier either!)
No support for DRM playback. (No Amazon or Netflix)
Crouton works as before.

So currently running Chromium OS version 88 as I type this.

whizzard

kapil How did you do #6? I can mount the image, but I don't see it in the GUI and the cli can't seem to find the lib folder where the drivers are. Also, can you share with me the drivers for the touchscreen?

KMyers

whizzard The image is mounted in the output directory of your build