Sunday, December 14. 2014Installing Ubuntu on an Acer Chromebook 13 (Tegra K1)
I bought an Acer Chromebook 13 CB5-311-T6R7 (the one with the NVidia Tegra K1 ARM CPU) to run it in a dual-boot configuration with Chrome OS and Ubuntu. I've used a slightly modified version of the modified chrubuntu script from here to install ubuntu. My version of the scripts and a writeup of the install procedure can be found here.
Update 2015-01-20: I have now updated my install script to address the freeze up issue discussed in the comments below. See my comment for the details of the fix used. Update 2015-08-28: I have now updated my install script to use the current NVidia "Tegra for Linux" release, Tegra124_Linux_R21.4.0. Comments
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I used your script to install chrubuntu on my Acer Chromebook 13 Tegra and I'm getting spontaneous freezing. Also, on the second linux boot and following, the compositor seems to have messed up and there are large black borders around the edges of all windows.
Any suggestions?
I think I had a similar problem and solved by disabling the first of the two wlan cards that show up in the menubar. (Why are there two network cards? Maybe two conflicting drivers trying to access the same hardware? I don't know..)
But I'm not sure if this is hat it solved it. After everything worked for me I was not so interested in investigating it any further and assumed it might just have been a random fluke..
Hi, im having the exact same problem. Could you give me a quick guide how to disable one of the two wlan cards? or a hint were to find an answer.
thank you 
Oh, I just clicked on the wlan icon on the upper right of the screen and selected 'disconnect' (and do this every time I log in just before the wlan connects). I'm sure it would be possible to tell network-manager to ignore the card completely or add a blacklist file to /etc/modprobe.d/, but I did not do either..
Also: I'm not entirely sure that this is what solved the problem for me. It was just odd that there where two NICs and I did not have the freeze issues after disabling the first NIC. So please leave a note here if this fixes or doesn't fix the issue for you. I have now tried to reproduce the problem by not disabling the first NIC (the one not called mlan0), but was not able to reproduce the problem this way. So maybe I did something else that fixed the problem for me..
Update: I was now able to reproduce the problem by not disabling the first NIC. I think this actually is the problem.. On my system I have now permanently disabled the first NIC (uap0) by adding the following line to /etc/rc.local (before the "exit" command):
nohup bash -c 'set -x; for i in {0..100}; do iw dev uap0 del && break; sleep 1; done; echo ok' > /tmp/iwdel_uap0.log 2>&1 & This is of course an ugly hack, but it seems to do the job.. I have also edited my script to add this line automatically, but have not tested it because I don't want to re-install my laptop. Please test and let me know if this fixes the problem.
Awesome, thank you!
I've made the same experience, the wifi seems to be the problem. After turning it off, Ubuntu is running quiet well. At the moment i am not able to test your "ugly hack" ^^, but i'll try it on the weekend. keep up the good work!
Use this slightly less ugly hack instead: Create /etc/modprobe.d/mwifiex.conf with the following content:
install mwifiex_sdio /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install mwifiex_sdio && sleep 1 && iw dev uap0 del I've now updated my install script accordingly and also re-installed my laptop to make sure that everything works fine. I also tried updating to the latest version of the nvidia driver package (R21.2.0), but that resulted in compiz crashing. So left it at R19.3.0. I have not tried any of the in between versions.
Thanks for your work. I'm not sure I would have figured it out without the jumpstart you provided. Could I recommend, for those who come later, linking to the chrubuntu.sh.t4l_R212 file in your main post and the instructions. I almost got the wrong file.
Also, just for reference I tweaked your script a little. It may only matter if you are installing to an SD Card. I commented out 36 & 42. It seems like later versions of ChromeOS don't have parted and part probe. I'm having a weird problem with users. For some reason if I log in as any user other than the default "user" the windows manager won't load. I haven't had time to work on it, but it's probably something simple. Did anyone else have a similar problem?
Thank you for your script. I had a different issue with mwifiex that I want to share: chromeos is running mwifiex_sdio V. 15.68.4.p111 while ubuntu installed 15.69.xxx. This leads to unstable connections with max. 4sec duration (and pain). syslog shows:
mwifiex_sdio_host_to_card: no wr_port available at high frequency. Then you should downgrade your firmware, use the chrome os one.
thx alot for sharing this nice script. im happy to be able to use the book now as i was hoping for, for quiet some time. im not an IT guy, so im depending on linux geeks like you are.
some minor issues - power there are no power options in terms of what to do closing the lid ect. if i want to save the battery, i have to switch the book of. suspending leeches energy quiet fast. - brightness i got the volume control buttons working, but they are not custom, so its a quiet easy thing to do. is it possible to get the brightness buttons working aswell ? - boot sequenz is there a possibility, to change the bs, or am i able to install some kind of boot manager ? again thx alot for your work.
I also have the same issue with power options
I have no "lid open/close" options available I have noticed that on first boot to ubuntu that the battery doesn't display. I don't know how to change this default behavior, however when you go to settings->power the battery will show up (it does for me at least) I would also like to have it suspend on closing the lid, but I have no idea how to get this to work. Also, fabian . . . if it is "leeching" power on suspend you probably don't have it suspended. Boot into chrome and take note of your "always on" blue led when you are running chrome or chrubuntu. In chromeOS, close the lid and you'll see that the blue goes to blinking orange. This is the way you know it is suspended. Boot into chrubuntu and press suspend from the OS level (should be an option in shutdown) then close the lid quickly. If your led is blinking orange it is suspended. I have the same battery sipping suspend mode for chrome and chrubuntu One strange thing is that even though the lid options aren't present in power settings, if I don't close the lid quickly after pressing suspend it will wake. Also, opening the lid wakes from suspended chrubuntu. Moving the lid seems to wake from suspend even if you are moving it to close it, so you have to close it up before suspend completes (while the led is still blue) Another thing I would like but don't know how to customize is advanced touchpad options like three finger drag and expose style four finger pinch, etc
My chrubuntu on Acer 13 (Tk1) runs quite well. Some freezes (almost always right after start, or not at all). I will try the provided suggestions here.
I have these issues left: BATTERY: is your battery indicator working? It aint for me here. States nothing. KEYS: I failed to map PG_Up/DOWN and HOME/END to other key-combos (seems Im a noob here). Can you help? BRIGHTNESS: following that xdotool advice here: http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/2mkf04/anyone_here_put_linux_on_a_chromebook_howd_it_go/ This works but every key press is ALSO registered as '~' key which is quite annoying.. Any ideas there? Running 14.04 here 
Scratch that I guess. I re-installed with the revised script. The sporadic wifi was fixed with the updated script, however suspend ended up being completely broken. Lid closing still does nothing, but asking suspend in software causes the system to hang indefinitely on a black screen with an underscore in the top left. Too bad as this worked with the first script, that one just unfortunately doesn't have the fix. I may re-install with the first script then apply the mwifiex and modprobe workaround manually
Okay, well I'm in a happy place now with the setup. I see @realife below says headphones aren't working and I just tested this myself and can't seem to get them working. I tried changing from internal speaker to headphones in sound settings but audio still plays through the speakers instead
1) no audio through headphones 2) no suspend on lid close options I do at least have suspend again. I was following your readme, and I noticed the updated script name in your downloads area After partitioning, when running the install (second time around) I pulled chrubuntu.sh.t4l_R212 instead of chrubuntu.sh from your blog with wget The first time with just chrubuntu.sh I ended up with the dual wlan in chrubuntu, and it would drop and reconnect to wifi constantly Running chrubuntu.sh.t4l_R212 the second time said it already noticed an ext partition, continue? Then overwrote it That script is good except for the no suspend at all issue. Suspend does the indefinite hang unfortunately, so I rebooted back to chrome and ran the readme again with the standard chrubuntu.sh and let it overwrite one more time. This time the wifi issue is fixed and suspend is working. There is still no option to suspend on closing the lid, but it at least works from chrubuntu's shutdown menu (the power button on the CB5 also brings this up, nice). After clicking suspend, closing the lid still has to be done within like a 4 second window, but it stays suspended just fine. I even charged it up while being on suspend and unplugged the charger then opened the lid to resume without issue. Opening the lid triggers resume, I really wish closing the lid could trigger suspend Other than the lid close and headphone audio it's pretty much perfect for everything I'm using it for Now if steam would just release an arm-buntu deb
Hey cliff.
I have acer cb5, and did exactly as your instruction said - and did succeed into booting ubuntu for the first time. worked okay - however headphones did not work. so I rebooted - and now i can't go back to ubuntu. can you help?
Hi. Thanks very much for this tutorial, it worked well without problems!
I have a question though - once I run sudo ubuntu to get into ubuntu, is there an easy way to hop back to chromeos without rebooting? Thanks again!
Hi,
the udev rule points to the wrong kernels event. In 99-tegra-lid-switch.rules: gpio-keys.4 -> gpio-keys.5 now chrubuntu suspends @ lid close. regards Andi
I am considering buying an Acer CB5 (Tegra K1) in order to install Linux (some form of Debian/Ubuntu) on it.
Can you build your own kernel or are you stuck with the ChromeOS kernel? Can you build and install your own kernel modules? Are the different linux-tools-* packages available so you can run perf?
Hi there,
Firstly, thanks for the script, it work great for me, until I tried to delete the default user. Now when I run the script to reboot into ubuntu I get errors, the xorg config file doesn't contain a default screen etc. My real question is (unless the problem I have very vaguely described above sounds familiar/common), can I perform a fresh install? I don't care about saving my old one, how would I go about this? Thanks in advance, Sam
Hello,
first I'd like to thank your for the great script! Is it possible to run Ubuntu 15.04 or the upcoming 15.10 with a stock kernel AND 3D acceleration? When I updated the 14.04 version, X would not start anymore due to incompatibility with the Tegra drivers. Your script is great but unfortunately, most of the software in Ubuntu 14.04 is outdated. As far as I know, more recent Linux kernels offer native support for the CPU and GPU, don't they?
Thanks. Ubuntu 15.04 now installs and works fine with NVidia drivers in Tegra124_Linux_R21.4.0. But only Unity desktop works, KDE crashes after login. Not sure if it is due to NVidia driver set, since KDE crash messages are displayed correctly.
Anyways, one very important thing regarding desktop responsiveness. By default Ubuntu sets CPU frequency governor to "on demand", which sets the CPU to lowest possible frequency when it boots up or remains idle for a few seconds. For regular Intel processors it is fine, since their typical lowest frequency is roughly 67% of their max / turbo frequency. However for ARM processor the lowest frequency is just 10% of max frequence, for example, on my CB5-311 chrome-book, the cpu switches to frequency 204MHz after boot up, whereas its max frequency is 2.1GHz. This frequency is so low that even the detection by ubuntu that cpu is running at low frequency and needs to run at higher frequency takes too long and a result user experiences really really slow response when s/he tries to work on desktop. The best way to handle this is to change frequency governor to "performance" as described here, http://askubuntu.com/questions/523640/how-i-can-disable-cpu-frequency-scaling-and-set-the-system-to-performance Warning, this may reduce battery time as running cpu at higher frequency consumes more power.
After the installation according to the README, i let the Software-Updater install 15.04, but now i can't get back into Ubuntu by running 'shell > sudo ubuntu' in the crosh terminal...
What should i do now?
Yah man, thanks for this. Major help - in case someone else ran into the issue I did, where no matter what you do, it ALWAYS reboots into chrome, there is another sticky bit I had to set manually even though I was in developer mode. I don't know why. Running crossystem revealed there are three settings:
dev_boot_usb dev_boot_legacy dev_boot_signed_only I had the first two enabled, but not the third. I don't know why I was getting the big scary screen with that disabled, but enabling it did the trick and upon reboot I saw the awesome text lines of the ubuntu kernel loading. I'm also running 21.4 drivers from nvidia, but I installed 14.04 and upgraded to wily. This is what I started with: https://github.com/docunext/chrubuntu-tegra It was an adventure! Haha. I think this is an amazing machine. The Linux_for_tegra archive is worth spelunking through I guess; it has some interesting settings and stuff if you are curious. Thanks again for this! Cool site.
Hi,
This is amazing. Now i love my chromebook acer cb5 a lot more. Did anyone manage to fix the headphone jack problem?
yes you can open alsamixer with the terminal then press F6 and open the channels (click "m") hp left out et right
You must press 'm' by sections 'hp left out' and by 'hp right out'
(those sections locate in end list of configs alsamixer).
Finally managed to make it work. Thank you very much for your help.
Is there any script to make the automatic switch from Speaker to headphone out? Thnx again for your help
Unfortunatly the tar used in the script is no longer available at cdimage.ubuntu.com so when running the script to install, I get a 404 error when the script tries to download it.
Try changing the line 148 to tar_file="http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-base/releases/$ubuntu_version/release/ubuntu-base-$ubuntu_version-core-$ubuntu_arch.tar.gz"
@ Clifford Wolf
-Wonder if you are still reading here, I hope so. Short version. Tried your script, but terminal returned: --2016-08-17 10:11:16-- http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-core/releases/14.04.1/release/ubuntu-core-14.04.1-core-armhf.tar.gz Resolving cdimage.ubuntu.com... 91.189.92.164 Connecting to cdimage.ubuntu.com|91.189.92.164|:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 404 Not Found 2016-08-17 10:11:17 ERROR 404: Not Found. In short, your script tried to download @http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-core/releases/14.04.1/release/ but file is only available @http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-base/releases/14.04/release/ I expect ubuntu moved it, and your fancy script did not foresee that. I'm should a idiot, that I can't hack you script. Please, could you renew that part? Best Regards Radio
The comment right above yours is the same question with a working answer by darxkies.
After installing ubuntu 14.04 using the script and the change to tar_file above, I'm unable to boot. I set cgpt partition 6 T to 1, S to 0 and when rebooting there is a thin white line horizontally across the screen, a one second pause, then it presumably gives up and goes back to chromeos. I've tried reinstalling and get exactly the same behaviour. After the failed boot T and S go back to 0 and priority is set to 0 as well.
Has anyone installed recently and had it work? Is there a workaround?
I've reinstalled today Ubuntu with the script and the edited link.
The system starts and restarts perfectly. I followed the instruction, but didn't set priority by cgpt.
I am having problems installing Ubuntu.
It gets to the Tegra driver installation and it errors out with: cp: cannot stat ‘/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/tegra.conf’: No such file or directory Any help?
This might work:
https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform/xorg-conf/+/9eb1bbb357d246aacda64f930122c811c29f5d43/tegra.conf |
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