Hisense Chromebook C11

The Hisense Chromebook (veyron_jerry) is part of a lower-cost lineup of Rockchip RK3288-based Chromebooks, featuring a quad-core 1.8GHz Cortex-A17 CPU and 2GB RAM.

Other features include:

  • 11.6" 1366x768 display with HDMI out
  • 802.11ac wireless and bluetooth
  • 16GB eMMC storage
  • 10 hours battery life
  • 2.5 pounds
Architecture
ARMv7 Cortex-A17
Processor
Rockchip RK3288 1.8GHz
RAM
2GB
eMMC
16GB
SD
Micro SD
USB
2
Wireless
B/G/N/AC
  • These instructions will create a dual-booting environment where you can switch between booting Arch Linux ARM and the stock ChromeOS. No changes are made to the internal eMMC drive, and your new Arch Linux ARM install will run completely from external storage. This is the recommended setup for those that just want to take a test drive, or don't want to give up ChromeOS.
  • You must be running the latest ChromeOS prior to installation.

Switch to developer mode

  1. Turn off the laptop.
  2. To invoke Recovery mode, you hold down the ESC and Refresh keys and poke the Power button.
  3. At the Recovery screen press Ctrl-D (there's no prompt - you have to know to do it).
  4. Confirm switching to developer mode by pressing enter, and the laptop will reboot and reset the system. This takes about 15-20 minutes.

Note: After enabling developer mode, you will need to press Ctrl-D each time you boot, or wait 30 seconds to continue booting.

Enable booting from external storage

  1. After booting into developer mode, hold Ctrl and Alt and poke the T key. This will open up the crosh shell.
  2. Type shell to get into a bash shell.
  3. Type sudo su to become root.
  4. Then type this to enable USB booting:
    crossystem dev_boot_usb=1 dev_boot_signed_only=0
  5. Reboot the system to allow the change to take effect.

Create a root USB or SD for dual booting

These instructions are written for installing to a USB drive with the sda device, assuming no other USB drives are plugged in. For an SD card, click here to magically adjust the instructions for the mmcblk1 device that an SD card will register as.
  1. Get a root shell as described in the previous section.
  2. Since ChromeOS will automatically mount any partitions it finds, unmount everything now: 
    umount /dev/sda*
  3. Start fdisk to create a GPT partition table: 
    fdisk /dev/sda
  4. At the fdisk prompt:
    1. Type g. This will create a new empty GPT partition table.
    2. Write the partition table and exit by typing w.
  5. Partition the micro SD card: 
    cgpt create /dev/sda
cgpt add -i 1 -t kernel -b 8192 -s 32768 -l Kernel -S 1 -T 5 -P 10 /dev/sda
  6. To create the rootfs partition, we first need to calculate how big to make the partition using information from cgpt show. Look for the number under the start column for Sec GPT table which is 15633375 in this example: 
    localhost / # cgpt show /dev/sda
       start        size    part  contents
           0           1          PMBR
           1           1          Pri GPT header
        8192       32768      1   Label: "Kernel"
                                  Type: ChromeOS kernel
                                  UUID: E3DA8325-83E1-2C43-BA9D-8B29EFFA5BC4
                                  Attr: priority=10 tries=5 successful=1
    
    15633375          32          Sec GPT table
    15633407           1          Sec GPT header
  7. Replace the xxxxx string in the following command with that number to create the root partition: 
    cgpt add -i 2 -t data -b 40960 -s `expr xxxxx - 40960` -l Root /dev/sda
  8. Tell the system to refresh what it knows about the disk partitions: 
    partx -a /dev/sda
  9. Format the root partition: 
    mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda2
  10. Download and extract rootfs tarball: 
    cd /tmp
curl -LO http://os.archlinuxarm.org/os/ArchLinuxARM-veyron-latest.tar.gz
mkdir root
mount /dev/sda2 root
tar -xf ArchLinuxARM-veyron-latest.tar.gz -C root
  11. Flash the kernel to the kernel partition: 
    dd if=root/boot/vmlinux.kpart of=/dev/sda1
  12. Unmount the root partition: 
    umount root
sync
  13. Reboot the computer.
  14. At the splash screen, instead of pressing Ctrl-D to go to ChromeOS, press Ctrl-U to boot to the external drive.
  15. After logging in as root (password is "root"), you can connect to a wireless network by running:
    wifi-menu
  16. Initialize the pacman keyring and populate the Arch Linux ARM package signing keys: 
    pacman-key --init
pacman-key --populate archlinuxarm

Mainline Kernel

The installation above will use the ChromeOS 3.14 kernel. The mainline kernel can be used instead, though some hardware may not be working yet. Two options are available to switch to the mainline kernel:

  1. Replace kernel packages after installation
    1. Install linux-armv7 packages, replacing the linux-veyron package, and the firmware-veyron package: 
      pacman -S linux-armv7 linux-armv7-chromebook firmware-veyron
    2. Type y and hit enter when prompted to flash the kernel to the kernel partition.
    3. Remove the veyron-libgl and xf86-video-armsoc-rockchip packages. Mali is not supported in mainline. 
      pacman -R veyron-libgl xf86-video-armsoc-rockchip
    4. Reboot.
  2. Perform a new installation with the above steps using the armv7-chromebook tarball: 
    http://os.archlinuxarm.org/os/ArchLinuxARM-armv7-chromebook-latest.tar.gz
    1. Install the firmware-veyron package, or copy it to the drive for later installation for wifi support. 
      pacman -S firmware-veyron

Additional Packages

  • X.org video driver package: xf86-video-armsoc-rockchip
  • Mali EGL and GLES drivers: veyron-libgl

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