Samsung Chromebook 2

The Chromebook 2 is an updated version of the first Samsung Chromebook, available in two different configurations.

XE503C12 11.6" Chromebook (Peach Pit):

  • Exynos 5420 big.LITTLE 1.9GHz Quad A15 / 1.3GHz Quad A7
  • 4GB DDR3 RAM
  • 16GB eMMC
  • 1366 x 768 11.6" LED screen
  • 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.0
  • 720p webcam
  • Dimensions: 11.40" x 8.06" x 0.66"
  • 2.65 pounds

XE503C32 13" Chromebook (Peach Pi):

  • Exynos 5800 big.LITTLE 2.0GHz Quad A15 / 1.3GHz Quad A7
  • 4GB DDR3 RAM
  • 16GB eMMC
  • 1920x1080 13" LED screen
  • 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.0
  • 720p webcam
  • Dimensions: 12.72" x 8.80" x 0.65"
  • 3.06 pounds
Architecture
ARMv7 Cortex-A15
Processor
Samsung Exynos 5800 2.0GHz
RAM
4GB
eMMC
16GB
SD
Micro SD
USB
2
Wireless
A/B/G/N, BT 4.0
  • 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-armv7-chromebook-latest.tar.gz
mkdir root
mount /dev/sda2 root
tar -xf ArchLinuxARM-armv7-chromebook-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 mainline kernel. If you are still using the ChromeOS 3.8 kernel (linux-peach), you can switch to mainline two different ways:

  1. Replace kernel packages
    1. Install linux-armv7 packages, replacing the linux-peach package: 
      pacman -S linux-armv7 linux-armv7-chromebook
    2. Type y and hit enter when prompted to flash the kernel to the kernel partition.
    3. Reboot.
  2. Perform a new installation with the above steps.

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