crouton: Chromium OS Ubuntu Chroot Environment

crouton is a set of scripts based around debootstrap that bundle up into an easy-to-use, Chromium OS-centric Ubuntu chroot generator. It should work for Debian as well (you can specify a different mirror and release), but "Chromium OS Debian Chroot Environment" doesn't acronymize as well.

"crouton"...an acronym?

It stands for ChRomium Os UbunTu chrOot enviroNment ...or something like that. Do capitals really matter if caps-lock has been (mostly) banished, and the keycaps are all lower-case?

Moving on...

Who's this for?

Anyone who wants to run straight Linux on their Chromium OS device, and doesn't care about physical security. You're also better off having some knowledge of Linux tools and the command line in case things go funny, but it's not strictly necessary.

What's a chroot?

Like virtualization, chroots provide the guest OS with their own, segregated file system to run in, allowing applications to run in a different binary environment from the host OS. Unlike virtualization, you are not booting a second OS; instead, the guest OS is running using the Chromium OS system. The benefit to this is that there is zero speed penalty since everything is run natively, and you aren't wasting RAM to boot two OSes at the same time. The downside is that you must be running the correct chroot for your hardware, the software must be compatible with Chromium OS's kernel, and machine resources are inextricably tied between the host Chromium OS and the guest OS. What this means is that while the chroot cannot directly access files outside of its view, it can access all of your hardware devices, including the entire contents of memory. A root exploit in your guest OS will essentially have unfettered access to the rest of Chromium OS.

...but hey, you can run TuxRacer!

Prerequisites

You need a device running Chromium OS that has been switched to developer mode. Note that developer mode, in its default configuration, is completely insecure, so don't expect a password in your chroot to keep anyone from your data. crouton does support encrypting chroots, but the encryption is only as strong as the quality of your passphrase. Consider this your warning.

That's it! Surprised?

Usage

There are three ways to acquire and run crouton. Two of which have cyclical dependencies.

If you're just here to use crouton, you can grab the latest release from goo.gl/fd3zc. Download it, pop open a shell (Ctrl+Alt+T, type shell and hit enter), and run sh -e ~/Downloads/crouton to see the help text. See the "examples" section for some usage examples.

The other two involve cloning this repo and either running installer/main.sh directly, or using make to build your very own crouton. Of course, you won't have git on your Chromium OS device with which to do this, hence the cyclical dependency. Downloading a git snapshot from GitHub would bypass that issue.

crouton uses the concept of "targets" to decide what to install. While you will have apt-get in your chroot, some targets may need minor hacks to avoid issues when running in the chrooted environment. As such, if you expect to want something that is fulfilled by a target, install that target when you make the chroot and you'll have an easier time.

Once you've set up your chroot, you can easily enter it using the newly-installed enter-chroot command. Ta-da! That was easy.

Examples

The easy way (assuming you want Xfce)

Download crouton.
Open a shell (Ctrl+Alt+T, type shell and hit enter) and run sudo sh -e ~/Downloads/crouton -t xfce
Wait patiently and answer the prompts like a good person.
Done! You can jump straight to your Xfce session by running sudo enter-chroot startxfce4 or, as a special shortcut, sudo startxfce4
On x86/amd64, switch between Chromium OS and your chroot using Ctrl+Alt+Back and the sequence Ctrl+Alt+Forward followed by Ctrl+Alt+Refresh. On ARM platforms (or if you've explicitly selected the xephyr target on non-ARM), use Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Back or Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Forward to cycle through the chroots.
Exit the chroot by logging out of Xfce.

With encryption!

Add the -e parameter when you run crouton to create an encrypted chroot.
You can get some extra protection on your chroot by storing the decryption key separately from the place the chroot is stored. Use the -k parameter to specify a file or directory to store the keys in (such as a USB drive or SD card) when you create the chroot. Beware that if you lose this file, your chroot will not be decryptable.

You want to make a bootstrap tarball and create a chroot from that

Download crouton.
Open a shell (Ctrl+Alt+T, type shell and hit enter) and run sudo sh -e ~/Downloads/crouton -d -f ~/Downloads/mybootstrap.tar.bz2
You can then create chroots using the tarball by running sudo sh -e ~/Downloads/crouton -f ~/Downloads/mybootstrap.tar.bz2

This is the quickest way to create multiple chroots at once, since you won't have to determine and download the bootstrap files every time.

A new version of crouton came out, and you want to update your chroot

Download the new crouton.
Open a shell (Ctrl+Alt+T, type shell and hit enter) and run sudo sh -e ~/Downloads/crouton -t xfce -u
You can use this with -e to encrypt a non-encrypted chroot, but make sure you don't interrupt the operation.

You're crazy and want to play with all of the features of crouton

Download the source snapshot tarball to your Chromium OS device.
Extract it and cd into the source directory.
Create a tarball of an old Ubuntu with perhaps the wrong architecture on a different mirror using the unbundled scripts:

sh -e installer/main.sh -d -a i386 -r hardy
-m 'http://mirrors.us.kernel.org/ubuntu/' -f iamcrazy.tar.bz2
Install the chroot with a custom name to an encrypted subdirectory in /tmp with the key stored on a removable disk, and install just cli-extra since you may be crazy but at least you recognize that /tmp is backed by RAM on Chromium OS and you'll quickly exhaust the available space if you install X11:

sudo sh -e installer/main.sh -m 'http://mirrors.us.kernel.org/ubuntu/'
-f iamcrazy.tar.bz2 -p /tmp -n crazychrooty -t core,cli-extra
-e -k '/media/removable/External Drive/chrootkeys/'
If that command actually worked, enter the chroot and login as root straight into vi because, well, you're crazy:

sudo sh -e host-bin/enter-chroot -c /tmp/chroots -n crazychrooty
-u root vi

Help! I've created a monster that must be slain!

The delete-chroot command is your sword, shield, and only true friend. sudo delete-chroot evilchroot

Tips

Chroots are cheap! Create multiple ones using -n, break them, then make new, better ones!
A script is installed in your chroot called brightness. You can assign this to keyboard shortcuts to adjust the brightness of the screen (e.g. brightness up) or keyboard (e.g. brightness k down).
Multiple monitors will work fine in the chroot, but you may have to switch to Chromium OS and back to enable them.
You can make commands run in the background so that you can close the terminal. This is particularly useful for desktop environments: try running sudo startxfce4 -b
Want to disable Chromium OS's power management? Run croutonpowerd -i
If you just want a nice CLI environment for running Vim, servers, gcc, there's no need to install X11. Just use the core or cli-extra targets and use the chroot via enter-chroot from the crosh shell. You can enter the chroot simultaneously with as many crosh shells as you want.

Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy, but I'm getting a Pixel, so confirm support maybe?

-t touch. 'nuff said.

Issues?

Running another OS in a chroot is a pretty messy technique (although it's hidden behind very pretty scripts), and these scripts are pretty new, so problems are not surprising. Check the issue tracker and file a bug if your issue isn't there.

I prefer Arch/Gentoo/Haiku/whatever

Great! Make your own scripts. Call it "chroagh!!"

License

crouton (including this eloquently-written README) is copyright © 2013 The Chromium OS Authors. All rights reserved. Use of the source code included here is governed by a BSD-style license that can be found in the LICENCE file in the source tree.

michaelorr / crouton