The archlinux.sh script allows one to install ArchLinuxARM (http://www.archlinuxarm.org) on an Acer Chromebook 13 featuring the NVIDIA Tegra K1 SoC. Instead of just a base system, the script installs an entire xfce4 system, so it is kind of similar to what a Xubuntu distribution would look like.

The script itself is derived from the work Clifford Wolf's chrubuntu script, which can be found here:

http://www.clifford.at/blog/index.php?/archives/131-Installing-Ubuntu-on-an-Acer-Chromebook-13-Tegra-K1.html

For now, I am running a dual-boot configuration with ChromeOS and ArchLinuxARM, where the default boots into ArchLinux. Please follow the instructions at the end of the installer script to set your own boot default priorities.

Unfortunately, the ChromeOS kernel that resides in the ChromeOS partitions doesn't support all features necessary for a properly working ArchLinux System. It lacks some of the required kernel configs for systemd. However, the ChromeOS kernel can still be used to boot the ArchLinuxARM system, which helps a lot for an initial setup. To solve the problem with the missing kernel configs I prepared a dedicated linux kernel package for this device, which can be found in core/linux-nyan of the master branch of my alarm PKGBUILDs fork:

https://github.com/RaumZeit/PKGBUILDs/tree/master/core/linux-nyan

Additioanlly, I provide a preliminary PKGBUILD for the proprietary NVIDIA Tegra K1 GPU drivers in the same repository:

https://github.com/RaumZeit/PKGBUILDs/tree/master/alarm/gpu-nvidia-tegra-k1

Both packages work well, and I have not encountered any device specific problems yet, except that 'Suspend to RAM' is not working (yet).

Update: Both packages are now automatically installed by the install script.

This script installs an ArchLinuxARM system, together with an xfce4/xorg environment, including the proprietary NVidia drivers for the Tegra K1 processor and its Kepler GPU.

This sound complicated but is in fact really easy. Simply press

esc + refresh (f3) + power

this will reboot. On the boot screen press Ctrl + D, then Ctrl-D again and then ENTER. This will re-install Chrome OS in dev mode.

When Chrome OS is in dev mode there is a long delay on each bootup. Simply press Ctrl-D on the boot screen to skip the delay.

Important: First, you have choose where you want to install ArchLinuxARM to. By default, the script repartitions the internal emmc drive to make room for two additional partitions. However, you can install to a USB thumbdrive as well. Just append the full device name of your usb drive to the script. Note, however, that all existing data on this device will be destroyed.

Open a Chrome window, press Ctrl + Alt + T to open a terminal window. Enter the following commands:

shell
cd ~/Downloads
curl -L -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/RaumZeit/LinuxOnAcerCB5-311/archlinux/archlinux.sh
sudo bash archlinux.sh

Alternatively, execute the following if you install to USB drive and your device is /dev/sda:

sudo bash archlinux.sh /dev/sda

This will ask you how much space you would like to reserve for ArchLinuxARM. I chose 16 GB. After changing the partition table the script will reboot the device. The boot loader will then recreate the chrome os partition used for user content on the smaller partition, leaving the newly created partition for alarm untouched.

Once again, open a Chrome window, press Ctrl + Alt + T to open a terminal window. Enter the following commands:

shell
cd ~/Downloads
curl -L -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/RaumZeit/LinuxOnAcerCB5-311/archlinux/archlinux.sh
sudo bash archlinux.sh

This time the script auto-detects that the target partition already exists and installs alarm.

After a successful installation, use the following login:

Username:  alarm
Password:  alarm

Root access can either be gained via sudo, or the root user:

Username:  root
Password:  root

Remember to change the default passwords of both accounts, alarm AND root!

If've set up more complete setup how-to that might be of interest: http://www.tbi.univie.ac.at/~ronny/acer-cb5-311.html

Please also note, that currently the chromium browser package available through the ArchLinux ARM repositories fails to run on many ARM platforms. This is due to some GCC 5.2 compilation issues that affects other programs as well. To find a possible fix for this problem is right now under investigation by the ArchLinux ARM developers. As long as there is no fixed package available, please refer to the following forum topic for a working chromium browser package (compiled with GCC 5.1):

http://archlinuxarm.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=9109&start=10#p48213 and https://archlinuxarm.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=9109&start=40#p51481

Copyright (c) 2015, 2015 Ronny Lorenz [email protected]