Chrome OS devices/Crostini
Crostini is Google's umbrella term for making Linux application support easy to use and integrating well with Chrome OS.
This article describes how to install Arch Linux on a Chromebook in a container (via Crostini), without needing to enable developer mode, allowing apps to run alongside other Chrome/Android apps.
Highlights:
- Officially supported, do not need to enable developer mode - leaves Chrome OS secure, no need to flash a BIOS etc.
- Better battery life - battery life of Chrome with the functionality of Linux.
- Audio (in/out) & OpenGL are supported, but USB devices support in only partially supported and development is still in progress.
Introduction
Enabling Linux support
Look for Linux under Settings and enable it. This installs a Debian Linux container that we will then replace with an Arch Linux container.
- Settings > Linux > Enable
Crostini is still rolling out to Chromebooks. If you do not see an option to enable Linux, you may need to switch to the beta or developer channel, if it has not rolled out to the stable channel for your laptop yet. This can be done via Settings > About Chrome OS > Channel > Dev/Beta.
Replacing the default Debian Linux container with Arch Linux
The below instructions based on https://www.reddit.com/r/Crostini/wiki/howto/run-arch-linux.
Optional: Delete the Debian container
lxc delete penguin should not leave the space unusable. See [1]
If you have no use for Debian anymore, you can save some storage space by destroying and recreating the Termina VM (this will let you skip renaming / deleting existing container later). Beware this will also delete any other containers you may have under Termina.
Open the crosh terminal in Chrome (Ctrl+Alt+t).
vmc destroy termina vmc start termina
Create the container
Open a new crosh terminal in Chrome (Ctrl+Alt+t). Create an Arch Linux container in Termina using VMC:
vmc container termina arch https://us.lxd.images.canonical.com/ archlinux/current
The following error will be shown after completion:
"Error: routine at frontends/vmc.rs:403 `container_setup_user(vm_name,user_id_hash,container_name,username)` failed: timeout while waiting for signal"
This is expected behaviour, proceed with following steps.
Open a shell in Termina and check if the Arch Linux container is present (it may a few minutes to show on the list):
vsh termina lxc list
If the container is not started, start it:
lxc start arch
Launch a bash shell in the container:
lxc exec arch -- bash
Set up the user
The container creates a default user on install based on the email used to sign in to Chrome OS. The username can be seen with the following command:
grep 1000:1000 /etc/passwd|cut -d':' -f1
Optionally you can rename user/group, by default named by your GMail id:
# pkill -9 -u old-username # groupmod -n new-username old-username # usermod -d /home/new-username -l new-username -m -c new-username old-username
A password needs setting for the user:
# passwd username
You may additionally want to install sudo and add the user to the wheel group. Use after installation:
# visudo
Uncomment the following line to allow the wheel group to use sudo:
# %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL
Add your user to the wheel group:
# usermod -aG wheel username
Leave the container:
# exit
Set up the container for use in Chrome OS
Login to the container using regular user account you just configured:
lxc console arch
Verify networking in the container. The command
$ ip -4 a show dev eth0
should return a non-empty output with the container's assigned IP address. If it is not empty, you can proceed, otherwise you are facing the issue described in #No network in container - follow the instructions listed there to address the issue.
Install the Crostini container tools, Wayland for GUI application support and XWayland for X11 application support:
Install the cros-container-guest-tools-gitAUR package. Additionally install wayland and xorg-xwayland to be able to use GUI tools.
Start/enable the following user units:
| Template instance | Purpose |
|---|---|
[email protected] |
Wayland |
[email protected] |
X11 |
[email protected] |
Wayland (low density) |
[email protected] |
X11 (low density) |
Make sure these user services are running successfully by checking their unit statuses. Now, when apps are installed in Arch Linux, they will automatically appear in the Chrome OS launcher. Exit from the container shell back to the Termina shell by pressing Ctrl+a q.
Replace the default Debian container with Arch Linux
The default Debian container is named penguin. Renaming the "arch" container created above to it will cause Chrome OS to launch Linux apps from the arch container. Stop the Arch Linux container:
lxc stop --force arch
Stop the Debian container and rename it to "debian" (this step can be skipped if you have already removed the Debian container):
lxc stop --force penguin lxc rename penguin debian
Rename the Arch container to "penguin" and start it:
lxc rename arch penguin lxc start penguin
Restart the Linux subsystem to apply the changes. After restart, verify that no failed system or user units are listed.
The following command should report the IP address assigned for container:
ip -4 a show dev eth0
Troubleshooting
Arch container fails to start after update to Chrome OS 81
Most of custom containers stopped working with Chrome OS 81 update. The root cause is LXC version update, as a result container fails to start with following error:
lxc penguin 20200411193357.312 WARN initutils - initutils.c:setproctitle:324 - Invalid argument - Failed to set cmdline lxc penguin 20200411193357.395 WARN conf - conf.c:lxc_map_ids:2919 - newuidmap is lacking necessary privileges lxc penguin 20200411193357.395 WARN conf - conf.c:lxc_map_ids:2925 - newgidmap is lacking necessary privileges lxc penguin 20200411193357.400 WARN conf - conf.c:lxc_map_ids:2919 - newuidmap is lacking necessary privileges lxc penguin 20200411193357.400 WARN conf - conf.c:lxc_map_ids:2925 - newgidmap is lacking necessary privileges lxc penguin 20200411193357.477 ERROR conf - conf.c:run_buffer:335 - Script exited with status 32 lxc penguin 20200411193357.477 ERROR conf - conf.c:lxc_setup:3589 - Failed to run mount hooks lxc penguin 20200411193357.477 ERROR start - start.c:do_start:1263 - Failed to setup container "penguin" lxc penguin 20200411193357.478 ERROR sync - sync.c:__sync_wait:62 - An error occurred in another process (expected sequence number 5) lxc penguin 20200411193357.478 WARN network - network.c:lxc_delete_network_priv:2561 - Failed to rename interface with index 17 from "eth0" to its initial name "veth421fa9d1" lxc penguin 20200411193357.478 ERROR lxccontainer - lxccontainer.c:wait_on_daemonized_start:842 - Received container state "ABORTING" instead of "RUNNING" lxc penguin 20200411193357.479 ERROR start - start.c:__lxc_start:1939 - Failed to spawn container "penguin" lxc penguin 20200411193357.701 WARN conf - conf.c:lxc_map_ids:2919 - newuidmap is lacking necessary privileges lxc penguin 20200411193357.701 WARN conf - conf.c:lxc_map_ids:2925 - newgidmap is lacking necessary privileges lxc 20200411193357.706 WARN commands - commands.c:lxc_cmd_rsp_recv:132 - Connection reset by peer - Failed to receive response for command "get_state" lxc 20200411193357.707 WARN commands - commands.c:lxc_cmd_rsp_recv:132 - Connection reset by peer - Failed to receive response for command "get_state"
Solution
After some troubleshooting, I made my container work by removing just two empty dirs from the container image. Navigate to crosh and execute following:
vmc start termina vsh termina lxc file delete penguin/var/lib/lxc lxc file delete penguin/var/lib/lxcfs
Restart Linux subsystem and container started should start normally.
No network in container
As was reported by multiple sources, systemd-networkd and systemd-resolved services in systemd-244.1 are not working properly for unprivileged LXC containers, which ends up in missing network connectivity inside the Crostini container. Users may see only IPv6 address but no IPv4 address for the arch container (for example, using ip a command).
One possible solution is stated here: LXD#No IPv4 with systemd-networkd.
Alternatively, another solution is to completely disable systemd-networkd/systemd-resolved and perform network configuration by dhclient service instead. First, install dhclient, then, as the root user, run:
dhcpcd eth0 systemctl disable systemd-networkd systemctl disable systemd-resolved unlink /etc/resolv.conf touch /etc/resolv.conf systemctl enable dhclient@eth0 systemctl start dhclient@eth0
NetworkManager and dhcpcd also can be used to address the issue if you prefer them over the dhclient solution.
ping doesn't work
If you get
ping: socket: permission denied
when trying to ping from a user other than root, you need to set the capability flag on the /usr/bin/ping file to fix it.
# setcap cap_net_raw+ep /usr/bin/ping
This should solve the problem
App not opening in chrome OS (infinite spinner)
I found that launching a console (lxc console penguin) session prevents apps from launching in Chrome OS. Launching results in an infinite spinner. In that case, I have to stop and start the container to get the Chrome OS launcher working
lxc stop penguin lxc start penguin
Instead of using an lxc console session, I use a regular Linux terminal GUI launched from Chrome OS that prevents this issue.
Audio playback/input
Crostini support audio playback starting Chrome OS 74. With cros-container-guest-tools-gitAUR installed both ALSA and PulseAudio playback should work after PulseAudio configuration. Audio input is supported starting Chrome OS 79.
Enter the following command in the container (in case you did not):
$ cp -rT /etc/skel/.config/pulse ~/.config/pulse
Video playback
mpv can play videos using software rendering without any addition configuration, however this is CPU consuming and laggy experience for modern video codecs like H265. For hardware accelerated playback GPU acceleration is required. Take into account, that GPU acceleration for Crostini is based on Virgil 3D GPU project, so no real GPU device pass-though is performed and hardware-specific APIs like VA-API or VPDAU are not available. However OpenGL acceleration can be used, i.e. this is example of mpv.conf which enabled accelerated video and audio playback on Google Pixelbook starting Chrome OS 77:
vo=gpu ao=alsa
GPU acceleration
On Google Pixelbook GPU acceleration works with Arch out-of-the-box starting Chrome OS 77. Also no flags need to be enabled on recent released of Chrome OS:
$ glxinfo -B
name of display: :0
display: :0 screen: 0
direct rendering: Yes
Extended renderer info (GLX_MESA_query_renderer):
Vendor: Red Hat (0x1af4)
Device: virgl (0x1010)
Version: 19.1.4
--> Accelerated: yes <--
Video memory: 0MB
Unified memory: no
Preferred profile: core (0x1)
Max core profile version: 4.3
Max compat profile version: 3.1
Max GLES1 profile version: 1.1
Max GLES[23] profile version: 3.2
OpenGL vendor string: Red Hat
OpenGL renderer string: virgl
OpenGL core profile version string: 4.3 (Core Profile) Mesa 19.1.4
OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 4.30
OpenGL core profile context flags: (none)
OpenGL core profile profile mask: core profile
OpenGL version string: 3.1 Mesa 19.1.4
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.40
OpenGL context flags: (none)
OpenGL ES profile version string: OpenGL ES 3.2 Mesa 19.1.4
OpenGL ES profile shading language version string: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 3.20
Unlock the keyring when starting the container
If you have problems with programs that use gnome-keyring-daemon, you need to write a user systemd daemon (see Systemd/User#Writing user units) that will run the keyring daemon when the container starts.
Create the following two files:
/etc/systemd/user/gnome-keyring.service
[Unit] Description=Keyring [Service] ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/export-keys KillUserProcesses=no [Install] WantedBy=default.target
echo random-password with cat ~/.password by creating the appropriate file in your home folder./usr/local/bin/export-keys
#!/bin/bash killall gnome-keyring-daemon echo random-password | gnome-keyring-daemon --components=secrets,ssh,pkcs11 --unlock --foreground
Give the file launch rights:
# chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/export-keys
Then, start/enable the gnome-keyring.service user unit and run
$ echo -n login > ~/.local/share/keyrings/default
Fullscreen video, games and mouse capture
Currently Crostini has limited support for mouse capture starting with Chrome OS 79. You must enable the flag chrome://flags/#exo-pointer-lock to get mouse capture. The closed issue relating to mouse capture is https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=927521.