Chromium OS is an open-source project that aims to build an operating system that provides a fast, simple, and more secure computing experience for people who spend most of their time on the web.
All downloads are located at https://chromium.arnoldthebat.co.uk/. This will be updated daily where builds compile succcessfully..
Build Instructions for USB
- Linux
- Use p7zip to extract the IMG file from the downloaded file.
- At the shell, run the following (where sdX is your USB stick and ChromeOS.img is the path to the IMG file you extracted):
dd if=ChromeOS.img of=/dev/sdX bs=4M - Boot from USB stick
- Windows
- Use 7zip to extract IMG file from the downloaded file.
- Use Win32 Image Writer, then select the IMG file and select the USB device from the menu.
- Click on “Write”.
- Boot from USB stick
All builds based on amd64 and ARM generic board.
If you want to install to your hard drive, follow the instructions here and here. Heed the warnings noted in the links!
Please note: there is a new behaviour with the chronos user password. The password has been removed from build R55-8777 onward and will continue to be removed for better overall security. Older builds have the password of ‘password’.
This means you need to use ‘chromeos-setdevpasswd’ from either shell or console to set your own password from build R55-8777 onwards.
By default, this also disables SSH access so if you also need this level of access, you will need to set a separate password using ‘sudo passwd chronos’. This allows the password for dev access and SSH access to remain separate if needed.
You can also just set a password using ‘sudo passwd chronos’ and this will allow for both dev and SSH access if you need to keep them the same. Do not use ‘chromeos-setdevpasswd’ if you want to keep the passwords the same.
Once installed, you can update from the Dev Server noted here.
Thanks to The Chromium Projects
Chromium OS GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
Hey,
I have been trying some linux distoro’s lately. They all seem to be saying my processor doesn’t have PAE support, the ‘forcepae’ kernel command seems to be working fine (Ubuntu booted A-OK with it), altho I don’t seem to see any option to enable it – it immediately throws me to the prompt that my processor doesn’t support PAE and that I need a appropriate kernel.
Anyone else notice that the latest builds aren’t in developer mode
I can’t execute shell in crosh or use crouton to install ubuntu.
Okay i just got a newer build and apparently the shell command and everything works fine now
I can´t import certificates in the certificate manager.
The import button is disabled.
Any reason why import certificates is disabled?
Its not by design so Ill need to review why
Awesome work…
But is it possible to install it on a partition?
With Hexxeh builds (long time ago) I remember I could dd it to the HDD… It’s something possible with this build too?
Instructions at the top of the page, look for the install portion and the “here” and “here”
I know how to install Chromium OS, but that will wipe all my HDD… I was asking for a method for installing it in a partition
I think it’s not possible. The system itself requires all these partitions.
I’ve been wondering this aswell.. As soon as i know it I will dd it. Currently I’m on a windows/ubuntu dualboot system with grub. It makes sense to `dd` it to a (empty) partition, but i’m hessitent to try it.
A bit outdated, but should work: [How to] Dual Boot Chromium OS with Windows
I’ve been wondering the same thing as Giovanni. I’ve been trying to install Chromium OS to my USB drive, inside a partition, so I can have both the OS and storage from the 1 USB. Unfortunately all I’ve managed is getting the OS going, but I can’t add files like you normally can with a USB. Do you know of a way?
If setting up in a partition the whole OS works, you could use the other free space (not the one in the partition) in order to have a NTFS/FAT32 partition and then put your files there…!
It should work also on Windows, if it can’t read the other partition (if it somehow detects them and say they’re readable it won’t work)
When I’ve been using the Win32 Image Writer, it’s been deleting my partitions, unfortunately. Then when I try to add a new partition, Windows does not recognise it because it’s not the first primary partition
You just have to disable the other partition in Windows Disk Manager (setting them as not active)… How did you install Chromium OS on a USB partition?
Had it worked for you? If so, hoe did you dot it? I’m eager to install on hdd!! I tried DD from USB install to unused partition, but it failed. Tried DD from too.IMG file to unused partition jut failed as well.
When I set up the partitions, the Disk Imager would recognise one of the partitions as being the drive and I installed it as you would to an unpartitioned drive.
I think it was either a Logical and Primary partition, or I installed it to the first Primary partition.
Aaaaaaah, so not with chromeos-install right?
Is that when you build it yourself? No, I’m using the image files and trying to write to the flash drive partition. I’ve noticed that when I write to the partition though, it just deletes the partition I’ve written to and creates a handful of new partitions for itself. When that happens there’s nothing I can do to make the partition I made earlier act as the primary active partition.
I almost got it working (copying ChromiumOS USB partitions to HDD and setting grub to load them properly), I’ve just to find where the partitions mount are defined in order to fix them to my HDD ones (it still searches stuff as meant in normal Chromium OS and it doesn’t get a match)
Arnold, just a question, should x86 build work with Pentium 4 – Northwood HT?
Thanks
Michal
Try it and see?
Well, I tried x86 version, it did not boot. It hanged on those file system errors
EXT4-fs (sda3): couldn’t mount as ext3 due to feature incompatibilities
This is the same mistake that x86 build is giving me on my intel notebook that runs x64 version perfectly.
ctrl + alt + T does not give me a terminal.
Any ideas?
Michal
It is working just fine. but it is not shutting down properly… each time i have to shut down forcefully. can you give any solution???
THANKS…
Hello project member.
I tried install and fun Cx86OS-20150311010102.img on my EeePC 1001HA. Now, I listen radio and watch many Video that put on flash from google-chrome-stable_current_i386.deb. It’s so wonderfull! Thank you a great image source.
So, I booted the .vdi image using VirtualBox, but no GUI showed up. Is that supposed to happen?
Pretty much since the graphics are not working currently. Console access does however work.
Ideas about the graphics?
Also, I’ve a suggestion: when building the images, you could use the “updatable” profile (line 210) so people could use the update_engine_client even on USB…! I know that build will be larger (or you can make just one generic updatable build, as it will be updated by the update_engine_client…!)
Hi Giovanni
Regarding the –disk_layout 2gb-rootfs-updatable. Ill be looking to test that over the next couple of weeks and if its not too big an overhead, will be porting to the default builds.. Thats a brilliant find so thanks a lot for finding this!
Graphics – I am still working on…
You’re welcome, it’s just something I went into while looking for some GPT table modifications (seems people should have to edit the file with partition and rebuild a whole bunch of stuff… or something like that…!)
I’ve tryed something other to boot from Live USB:
Once i have downloaded the image, i renamed the downloaded image in *OS-20150314010101.img to *Camd64OS-20150314010101.iso!
After that i’ve made an bootable USB Stick with the build in Tool from Linux Mint; i think it is also possible to do this with unetbootin.
It still works and i can boot the Chromium OS from the Stick!
Greetings from Cologne, Germany,
Achim
So I now have Chromium OS 43.0.2331.3 running on my Acer Aspire One D255.
And it seems to work remarkably well, though the microphone doesn’t seem to work, and while I can hear sound from YouTube, I can hear no sound from Google Play Music
Never able to get any of the image to run, no matter it’s from USB stick or VirtualBox, for USB it got stuck at the “Welcome” screen , I can see the screen but it does not response of mouse click, except the Shutdown button on bottom left. Mouse point moves though.
For Virtual Box I got SMBus error message
Me too. I’m studi on welcome screen and mouse click is not working
i tried the latest 64bit build and it booted up fine but wifi module wasnt detected,anything i can do?my network adapter is : ralink rt3290
will future builds somehow fix this?please help
Added to the list for the special builds.
Be sure to set the network adaptor to DPCH protocol. That cured my problem.. Also, pay no attention to the opening screen-Wi/fi, just go a little further on and sign into Google.. Then test your connection with the browser…
so i made a comment about this earlier but i am not sure it got through so i am making another.
it booted up fine on my laptop but my wifi module wasnt detected,my network adapter is :ralink rt3290
can this be fixed?will future builds do the trick?please help
Hi,
could you pls enable the h264 /mp4codec, Its not possible to add it afterwards if it was disabled on compilation.
https://github.com/nwjs/nw.js/wiki/Using-MP3-&-MP4-%28H.264%29-using-the–video–&–audio–tags.
https://github.com/nwjs/nw.js/issues/1461#issuecomment-32009915
Added to the list for the special builds. Lower priority however than the wireless drivers.
I’m trying to boot from USB, so I can install once running.
I get stuck at “booting kernel”.
I have no idea where to start trouble shooting.
Please help!
Toshiba NB555D Netbook.
Camd64OS-20140928010101.img
Maybe you could try a more recent build of Chromium
Hello,
Flash install not working anymore !!! 🙁
curl -L http://www.brash.ca/flash.sh | bash
3.1 – Installing GNU ar.
xz: (stdin): File format not recognized
tar: Child returned status 1
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
chmod: cannot access ‘/usr/bin/ar’: No such file or directory
I couldn’t find GNU ar – can’t install flash, PDF or the MP3 plugin 🙁
Probably because the original author has changed the script: http://goo.gl/8vZk83
Yup – if my flash.sh isn’t working, it was just a rebuild of sixsixfive’s.
Sometimes the source files that the script downloads change online. I don’t run the script very often at all so when it breaks I depend on others to tell me.
For now – use the script Gerd linked to. They all basically do the same thing… It’s just a matter of getting some library files from the Chrome browser source files.
I’ll fix mine when I get a chance (no testing machines right now and won’t have one for about a week).
Same for me 🙁
Now, I can watch way more videos with the flash player plugin! Thx for that link! Btw Google Hangouts is still working just fine for me, just saying cuz I heard that it made Hangouts unable to work before
Hey Gerd – tried that link but it failed as well.
Right now mine is failing because the gnuar tarballs are no longer hosted on Google Drive like they were before.
Not sure why that other one failed, I didn’t look into very deeply.
I’m going to be re-writing mine when I get the time (probably next week).
Hello I am on a hp Probook 6550b and the wifi led’s are flashing when wifi is connected how would I be able to stop the flashing I have had a look at some guides but they have not worked because the commands are not available. Thanks in advance
French Canadian ou French keyboard not working on the 2 last daily builts… :-/
hi arnold, i am in a bit of a soup. i am being able to downland your latest build 20150320010101.img file and everything. i am able to load it as well. the chromium logo comes up the screen gets alittle bright and dim again and then again the command prompts come up and thats it. it shows some inforation that kernel ……… something and the pc starts loading back in windows. i want to request you to please tell me which build will be right for my laptop?
its a lenovo g510 3000 2 gb ram intel graphics its about 7 or 8 years old. i love the laptop and am sick of windows now and i’m in love with chromium. please help
hi arnold moved a step ahead…. downloaded another date build this time 20150220010101. img now i got to second screen but wifi not showing only ethernet showing. baby steps. but will eventually get there i think. 🙂
Try the special builds and see if you get further.
Hi. Thanks for the reply mate. I did try the special build, the broadcom one, thinking that in the 22feb build, it didn’t show my wifi option, so i thought that I’ll try the one with the broadcom network adapter support. But nothing happened. I didn’t even get the initial boot screen. I’ve tried 5 builds including the broadcom one, one of 20 March, latest one, then 3 March, then, last 21 February. The only one that worked till the step mentioned above, Is the Cx086 20150220010101.img, the 22 Feb 2015 build. But i cannot do anything further in this one, because instead of wifi, it has ether net option. But my ethernet port shows ‘network cable unplugged’. Damn my luck. 🙁 I’m so anxious to get it working, please try and show me the way. If you could just tell me which build will work that’s amazing. My laptop is Lenovo 3000 g 510,its pretty old, but works perfectly. 2 gb ram. Intel graphics card. Intel 86 family chipset. Broadcom network adapters both wired and wireless. If you are suggesting the special builds then which one do you reckon I should try. I’m sorry to bother you mate! Please do help!
I’m not able to enable Adobe Flash Player… How do I do it Arnold… I get a message that is installed by default on Chromebook…
You use a script to find the latest adobe flash player plugin: http://goo.gl/8vZk83. Then, choose to install the codecs and reboot the pc, then enable the adobe flash player plugin afterwards.
Hi. Thanks for the reply mate. I did try the special build, the broadcom one, thinking that in the 22feb build, it didn’t show my wifi option, so i thought that I’ll try the one with the broadcom network adapter support. But nothing happened. I didn’t even get the initial boot screen. I’ve tried 5 builds including the broadcom one, one of 20 March, latest one, then 3 March, then, last 21 February. The only one that worked till the step mentioned above, Is the Cx086 20150220010101.img, the 22 Feb 2015 build. But i cannot do anything further in this one, because instead of wifi, it has ether net option. But my ethernet port shows ‘network cable unplugged’. Damn my luck. 🙁 I’m so anxious to get it working, please try and show me the way. If you could just tell me which build will work that’s amazing. My laptop is Lenovo 3000 g 510,its pretty old, but works perfectly. 2 gb ram. Intel graphics card. Intel 86 family chipset. Broadcom network adapters both wired and wireless. If you are suggesting the special builds then which one do you reckon I should try. I’m sorry to bother you mate! Please do help!
UPDATE: I’ve put the build. On my hard drive now. But the worst part is, I still don’t have wifi which is making everything well useless… So please help me if you know some codes that i can write in the developer mode. I’ve mentioned my laptop specs above. Can I get the update for the driver on the hard drive or something and run it from there.? Please. Any suggestions are welcome. If I’ve not been clear enough in explaining, please drop. Me a line. I’ll try again. Thanks
Hi. Broadcom isn’t currently working. I’m trying to fix it…..
Gidday. Have just tried the latest x86 build on a Toshiba NB500 and everything works except for resume from sleep. Any ideas on what I can do to get it to wake properly?
Sooo… I just installed on my HDD. it from SD with a distribution from the end of the last year. Next, I updated it from the Settings/About screen. I says this is version 43; is this possible? Should I update it from the Dev channel from this site or have I done everything alright?
Hi
No GUI here, virtualbox on macbook pro retina.
Thanks
how did you get past the grub loader?
I cannot get past the “Booting ‘local image A'”…
The vm flags seem to be right from everything I’ve read…
You say you test against VirtualBox, do you run every VDI build and test? I have tried about 9 builds now, with the right VB flags (PAE, EFI …) but none will go past the booting local image A/B prompt ( I get to the grub loader and can select A or B, but after that it just hangs).
Thanks for any pointers!
I just compile against the platforms, I cannot test them all and havent used VirtualBox for quite a while to be honest! I leave a lot of the testing to you guys to feed back on what works and doesnt!
Well, my Acer AO751h with all the horrible hardware, Poulsbo/GMA500 chipset and Broadcom wifi, seemed to boot pretty ok…
Except that the UI never loads. It gets stuck in the terminal boot sequence… I can’t make it work…
Been trying to download older special builds to see if anything works, but the download speed is so damn slow that it will take 8 hours to download.
If there is any command I can type to make the UI appear in this latest build, it will be appreciated.
Alright, for everyone else:
VirtualBox video drivers as of March 31st still are not there. The VDI images do work to boot and you can gain SSH access (I use a bridges adapter so I can get my IP address from my local wireless router) then SSH to that IP. Login with user ‘chronos’ and password ‘password’.
Once in, you can ‘sudo su’ to gain root.
—-
For all that are getting the VirtualBox bootup error:
——————————
Decompressing Linux… Parsing ELF… Performing relocations… done
Booting the kernel.
[ 0.000000] tsc: Fast TSC calibration failed
[ 0.216650] atkbd serio1: probe failed
[ 0.3024261 EXT4-fs (sda3): couldn’t mount as ext3 due to feature incompatibilities
[ 0.711996] piix4_smbus 0000:00:07.0: SMBus base address uninitialized – upgrade BIOS or use force_addr=0xaddr
——————————
You need to check 2 flags in the VB vm config… Under Settings > System
[Motherboard tab] Enable EFI (set to Checked)
[Processor tab] Enable PAE (set to Checked)
Arnold, thanks for putting up with all the repetitive comments, and thanks for all your hard work on this!
MS
One last clarification!
For me, the VirtualBox player will only show “Booting ‘local image A’” even though it is booted and SSH is running.
That is where a lot of my confusion was coming from.
m scribe, thanks for all the information.
I have had the same problems.
In VBox (running on a 14.10 Ubuntu host), all I end up seeing is a black screen that just says, “Booting ‘local image A'”. (Not really sure what that even means, or what the other “images” are.)
I was able to SSH (using Putty) into the ChromeOS as you suggested, but then I got stuck….. I don’t know the commands to actually *DO* anything useful in the operating system. What are commands I’d run to, for example, start the Chrome browser?
Thanks for putting so much effort into this project! I searched around, but didn’t find anyone having this issue. I’m trying to run it on a Lenovo R60 (off memory stick, but want to install to spinning drive if I get it all working). Seems to work, my wireless and eth drivers work, and I can log in (even asks for my two factor, so I know it’s getting to Google servers) but then it just spins the little loading icon. I’ve tried a few flavors of the x86 image. Anyone seen this, any ideas how to get past this?
I saw this too.
After a dig in the log files. i found it’s because cryptohomed is not started. Still don’t know why.
My workaround:
1. ctrl+alt+F2 to the shell, log in with chronos.
2. sudo /usr/sbin/cryptohomed
After that i can log in to the desktop, i know there are some errors in the log files about cryto… But at least we can log in now. I did not have a time to deeply dig into the problem, like why cryptohomed service is not started by default, or maybe there are something wrong which makes it failed to start.
I’ve tried this on 3 machines in my possesion. No wifi on an Acer Aspire 3680 or HP DV4, on a Gateway Lt3103u wifi works, but the display (Radeon x1270) has opaque triangles randomly placed all over the screen. The same result on the normal and special builds. Would it be worthwile to try older builds?
This and Chrome are perfect for non-techies! I’d love to resurrect some older machines.
I’m getting the same triangle artifacts on Radeon X1270. Tried Camd64OS-20150920, Cx86OS-20150920, and Cx86OS_R47-7451.0.U-Special so far.
Just updated to last build… And now my laptop is down !!!
Screen flashing a lots on boot… See only mouse and blocks on the screen…
Chromium is now unusable !
You can just reinstall the version that was working for you and don’t upgrade. The differences in daily builds is sometimes tiny and not worth the downtime.
Hello,
How to reinstall the working build (downgrade) whitout loosing config ? (I don’t want like a “powerwash”)
Tks
Hi.
I can’t switch language on my HP ProBook 4330s. Everything types in english.
Can you please add support for nvidia 320m gpu drivers? i can’t boot it on my mid 2010 macbook and it won’t work in virtual box. the chromium logo comes up, but it is very skewed and messed up. Thanks! Also, i have chromium OS on my eee pc 1005HA and the disable trackpad button does not work, this would be nice to have but it does not matter that much. Thanks and great work!
Recently installed it on an old DELL Inspiron 1545.
Had to replace to wireless card with an Intel since it had a broadcom but now it runs very well. They touchpad did not work out of the box and had to be enabled manually.
https://github.com/sixsixfive/misc/tree/master/CrOS had a great script to install all the plugins and set the chromium api key.
One thing I could not make work very well yet is the keyboard. The default German keyboard layout does not work correctly with the laptops physical layout. The German umlauts for example are not working and the special characters are out of place. Any idea on how to change they keyboard layout or add a custom layout?
Arnold, I am a teacher at a school that has very limited assets and have tried to create a bootable USB drive using your Chromium OS builds (both special and weekly). I have been unsuccessful at this point. I have used Hexxeh’s Vanilla build and was able to install it, but the browser was out of date and would not allow me to go to the Chrome store to get the needed apps.
The box we are attempting to make work is an Acer Veriton L460 with an Intel Core 2 Duo GPU at 2.6GHz. It has 2 GB of RAM.
I have some limited Linux experience. Could you make some recommendations regarding this. Thank you for your assistance.
Hi
Let me have a look at the specs this weekend and Ill get in touch directly..
Thank you so very much for your assistance.
Do you also build “test image” build for download?
thanks
Nope, dev only…
Hi, and thanks for a great resource.
I’ve successfully got it running from a USB stick on my old Toshiba NB250 (previously running a very old Hexxeh version).
I can’t figure out the installing to hard disk part.
Tried the two articles you linked to, and about 2 hours of googling for a solution. Gets frustrating after a while!
Any ideas? It seems to stump me by not determining a destination device, suggesing “Specify –dst yourself”.
one article I came across suggested it should probably be –dst/dev/sda, but it’s just not happening for me.
Any pointers please?
Many thanks
Alan
hi, its normally –dst=/dev/sda but its dependant on the drive layout you have…
Thanks! It proceeded to start, was working through a list of creating partitions and copying stuff over. For the last 20 minutes though, just a black screen. Have I killed it? 🙂
Sounds like it!!
It was just playing dead. Little tinker. The good news is that it’s now fine, and running your wonderful Chromium build without the USB stick.
It’s an overused word but you Sir, are awesome.
cheers.
I have a question. I’m trying to access the su command line to get my trackpad + other things working and when I’m in chromium os and I enter ctrl+alt+f2, nothing happens. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!
Whenever I try to boot into it, it’s a black screen with a static thing on the top portion of the screen. What’s up with that?
Hi, great job, but in the latest builds, choosing the Italian keyboard, punctuation and symbols do not match. You can solve?
Thanks in advance.
Please help!
it booted up fine on my PC, but my wifi module not detected, my network adapter is : TP LINK TL-WN722N
can this be fixed?
Will future builds do the trick?
Added to the list for the special builds
It is possible to update manually, not via dev server, only by the image on a USB stick?
I have downloaded and am using the special broadcom build and i cannot seem to get into kiosk mode. Any sugestions?
Hey Guys can I use the PowerWash option ? I install it on my laptop. And I want to try it because I want to remove/change account. Thanks guys
Okay so I found a bug. When I try to play webm on browser. It goes “Crash”. I’ll trying now to update to know if the bug still exist. btw my current build is 2015-04-11 x86. Install on hard drive.
Hi Arnold !
your builds are really excellent !
I was just wondering if there would be any possibilities of including /proc/config.gz for your kernel config is really neat and i’d love to have a look
cheers and keep up the good work !
Hi there.
I just install it on my HDD but when i reboot i put my gmail account then screen turn to black and it takes a long time to configure. Its that right?
Thank for your efforts
Sony VAIO VGN-NR11S
Intel Core 2 Duo T5250
2 GB/Go DDR2 SDRAM (667Mhz)
HDD 200GB
Intel GMA X3100
Arnold, I love what you have done and the support you have given to everyone and I am now hoping I can get a little help too…
I have an Asus eeePC 900HA and I have been able to run your latest x86 builds from USB with two large issues.
1. No track pad. I found your article to correct this but it would not run, so I decided to install to SSD and try again…
2. I can’t get it to install. No matter what I try its says directory or file not found. However if I try to run fdisk, I see sda come up with a volume that matches my SSD. Any pointers?
Thanks again mate!!
I think the 900HA is Elantech touchpad. That should be in the upcoming special build Im working on now.
Thanks!
Any ideas about not installing? Or is it just that I’m a linux noob and goofing something?
Update:
Your current special build Cx86OS_R42-6813.0-Special supports the track pad!! I was trying the daily build..
Alas, still can’t install….
is there a way to add the nvidia drivers without a GUI?