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David Schneider edited this page Mar 31, 2015 · 123 revisions

Introduction

There's tips for using crouton floating all around the interwebs. This wiki is for collecting them in one space. Anything core to the usage of crouton will probably be moved into the README, but device-, environment-, and application- specific usage tips can find a home here.

Contributing

Feel free to add your tips and tricks to the wiki. Do test any commands and scripts you post before submitting them, and try to clean up your instructions. Don't be surprised or offended when the crouton author(s) and other upstanding community members tweak your tips to make the style consistent, or to work in more general situations. All tips should be placed in sub-pages, linked in the appropriate category. It's better to make a separate page for your trick than to have a long page of disparate and unorganized tips, but if you have a bunch of one-liner hints that fit into a coherent group, go ahead and combine them into one page.

Usage Tips & Tricks

  • Security: A bit about crouton security and why you should enable encryption.
  • Keyboard: How to install Chromebook keyboard layout, add custom key bindings, etc.
  • Languages: How to change your language
  • udev: manage inserted devices
  • Power Management: Keep the system and/or screen from sleeping:
  • Autostart Chroot: Start a crouton chroot automagically when ChromeOS starts.
  • Audio: Some notes about audio in crouton, and how it (literally) plays with Chromium OS.
  • Sharing-files-and-folders: Edit /etc/crouton/shares to share things with ChromeOS.

Custom Keys Bindings via commands

Settings>Keyboard>Application Shortcuts (Combinations also supported with +)

xdotool key F11
xdotool key F12
xdotool key Delete

Volume Shortcuts (Mute-Vol+/-)

amixer set Master toggle
amixer set Master 5%+
amixer set Master 5%-

Installer

Backups

Use sudo edit-chroot -b nameofchroot (in a crosh terminal shell) to back up your chroot, and sudo edit-chroot -r nameofchroot to restore it. edit-chroot will warn you if you're clobbering a chroot by restoring, in which case you need to run sudo edit-chroot -rr nameofchroot (two r's to confirm that you want to clobber it).

Be aware that the backup file is automatically placed into your Downloads folder. If you are in guest mode there will not be enough space there. Instead, be sure to log in before you run a backup so you can use your hard drive space.

In the likely event that you run out of drive space on your Chromebook, you can change the source and destination tarball using -f. Use sudo edit-chroot -f /path/to/folder -b nameofchroot

If you get an error that the -b option is not available in edit-chroot, it means you need to download the latest version of crouton and use it to update your chroot. The crouton update flag is -u. For example sudo sh -e crouton -r raring -t xfce -u could be used to update an existing chroot based on the Raring Release and xfce Target. The update includes a newer version of edit-chroot which support the -b and -r options.

In the event that you want to restore a backup to a stock chromebook (with developer mode enabled) you can use the crouton installer with the -f option specifying the backup's tarball, e.g., sudo sh -e crouton -r raring -t xfce -f /media/removable/SD\ Card/backup/raring-20130617-1234.tar.gz

Devices

For a list of all or most Chromebook models, features and comparisons, see:

Distributions

Desktop Environments

Applications

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