How to get the touch pad working in Chromium OS

If you are one of the few with a none working touch pad, hopefully the below will sort it!

As ever, boot your device and get to su command line  ([ Ctrl ] [ Alt ] [ F2 ]), log in as chronos and then

sudo su
mount -o remount, rw /
cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-touchpad-cmt.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-touchpad-cmt.conf.bak
rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-touchpad-cmt.conf
cd /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/
wget http://chromium.arnoldthebat.co.uk/files/fw/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-touchpad-cmt.conf

Then reboot.

The contents of the conf file have been ripped from a Dell Latitude setup so may well not sort other laptops. In this case I would suggest that the file is structured in the following manner:

Section "InputClass"
 Identifier "touchpad"
 MatchIsTouchpad "on"
 MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
 Driver "synaptics"
 Option "AccelerationProfile" "-1"
 Option "Scroll Buttons" "0"
 Option "Scroll Axes" "1"
 Option "Scroll X Out Scale" "1.25"
 Option "Scroll Y Out Scale" "1.25"
EndSection

The important section is the “Driver “synaptics”” since the devs at Chromium have left the old synaptics stack loaded into the distribution. With this in mind, expect the above to stop working as later versions come out!

Occasionally in certain screens (like login(!)), once the screen is loaded, the mouse pointer will not appear. In order to activate simply left click anywhere on the screen.

Any dev server updates will more than likely undo any of the above so please bear that in mind.

Usual caveats around none of this ever working etc.

Getting Edimax EW-7811UN (or rtl8192cufw devices) to work with Chromium OS

Surprisingly easy as it happens!

Firstly boot your device and get to su command line  ([ Ctrl ] [ Alt ] [ F2 ]), log in as chronos and then

sudo su

Then pop in the wireless dongle and review the contents of dmesg.

You should see something along the lines of the following:

rtl8192cu: Loading firmware rtlwifi/rtl8192cufw.bin
rtlwifi: Firmware rtlwifi/rtl8192cufw.bin not available

In order to remedy this, firstly mount the OS read/write:

mount -o remount, rw /

Then create the directory structure and cd into it, and download the bin file

mkdir /lib/firmware/rtlwifi
cd /lib/firmware/rtlwifi/
wget http://chromium.arnoldthebat.co.uk/files/fw/lib/firmware/rtlwifi/rtl8192cufw.bin

Remove the dongle and reinsert. Lights on the dongle will now illuminate and you ‘should’ be able to connect to a wireless network! The version I tested against would not scan the network so I needed to add the wireless network manually. Reboot will remember the change so all should be good from that point on.

Any dev server updates will more than likely undo any of the above so please bear that in mind.

Usual caveats around none of this ever working etc.