Serious programming on ChromeOS

In my previous post I explained how to get a working OpenCL for ARM's Mali GPUs on the Samsung Chromebook 2. That's great I know and you are very welcome. :) 

However, do you seriously want to write OpenCL goodness on that small 11" screen? And don't get me started on the keyboard... I mean the Samsung Chromebook 2's keyboard is not that bad considering this a 250$ laptop we are talking about... however I am currently typing on a Lenovo X1 carbon chiclet style keyboard and the experience is the closest thing to a nerdgasm (nerd-orgasm... yeah I just made it up, deal with it! ...ah no actually it already exists).  

First thing... we need to enable ssh server. Lucky enough, ChromeOS comes by default with an ssh daemon (/usr/sbin/sshd) , however it is not enabled by default. The way to enable it is described in [1,2]. For short there are the steps:

1. Remove rootfs verification (!!please backup your stuff!!):

$ sudo /usr/share/vboot/bin/make_dev_ssd.sh --remove_rootfs_verification --partitions 4
$ reboot

2. Mount the rootfs in rw mode (remember you will need to do this every time you reboot the device and want to write in the root partition):

   $ sudo mount -o remount,rw /
   

3. Generate SSH keys:

$ sudo mkdir /mnt/stateful_partition//etc/ssh
$ ssh-keygen -t dsa -f /mnt/stateful_partition//etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key
$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -f mnt/stateful_partition/etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key

4. Allow incoming traffic on PORT 22:

$ sudo /sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT

5. We can now create a new user used to remotely login (alternatively you can set the chronos user password). To create a new user you need to follow these steps:

   
   $ sudo useradd -G wheel -s /bin/bash mali_compute
   $ sudo passwd mali_compute
   $ sudo mkdir /home/mali_compute
   $ sudo chown /home/mali_compute mali_compute
   
   

   Now we have a user, however the user cannot run sudo and we already know we need to be able to run sudo in order to enter the Arch linux chroot. To solve this we need to make user belonging to the wheel group part of the sudoers. This is done using the visudo command.

   $ sudo su
   $ visudo
   

   Search and uncomment one of following lines:

   ## Uncomment to allow members of the group wheel to execute any command
   # %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL
   
   ## Same thing without a password
   # %wheel ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL
   

...and voila' you are done.

Now get your ip address using the ifconfig command

chronos@localhost / $ ifconfig 
lo: flags=73  mtu 65536
        [...]

mlan0: flags=4163  mtu 1500
        inet 192.168.1.80  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 192.168.1.255
        ether xxx:xxx:xxx:xxx  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 1908  bytes 802994 (784.1 KiB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 1524  bytes 415774 (406.0 KiB)
        TX errors 4  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

Now from your desktop machine simply type:

$ ssh mali_compute@192.168.1.80
motonacciu@ThinkPad-X1-Carbon:~$ ssh chronos@192.168.1.80
The authenticity of host '192.168.1.80 (192.168.1.80)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is ...
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Warning: Permanently added '192.168.1.80' (RSA) to the list of known hosts.
Password: 
mali_compute@localhost ~ $ uname -a
Linux localhost 3.8.11 #1 SMP Tue Sep 30 23:28:35 PDT 2014 armv7l SAMSUNG EXYNOS5 (Flattened Device Tree) GNU/Linux

Super cool right? ...well.. not really! Unfortunately you are going to loose the configuration once you reboot your chromebook. Or better, you will need to rerun the iptables and sshd commands manually if you wish to enable the daemon again. No worry, we can automatically start the SSH daemon by adding a script under the /etc/init directory, e.g., sshd.conf; it should contain the following lines (remember to remount the rootfs in rw mode in the case you rebooted the device in the meantime).

start on started system-services
script
     /sbin/iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT
     /usr/sbin/sshd
end script 

You should be able to login again from your next reboot.

Great, we can login into the super underpowered ChromOS shell... what's the deal? Right, but we are not done yet. The 'prestige' hasn't come yet :). Well, the idea of the last step is to let the user we just created jump into the Arch Linux chroot at login and therefore bypass the ChromeOS shell. This is rather simple to do as well (assuming you have created the chroot, otherwise go here):

$ su mali_compute
$ echo "sudo enter-chroot" > ~/.bash_profile

That's it! Wonder what's going to happen next time you log into your chromebook?

motonacciu@ThinkPad-X1-Carbon:~$ ssh mali_compute@192.168.1.80
Password: 
Last login: Mon Oct 13 22:17:40 BST 2014 from 192.168.1.71 on pts/1
Entering /mnt/stateful_partition/crouton/chroots/arch...
mali_compute@arch ~ $ uname -a
Linux arch 3.8.11 #1 SMP Tue Sep 30 23:28:35 PDT 2014 armv7l GNU/Linux

Limited chrosh... gone!! Welcome to fully fledged Linux environment! :)

[1]: http://www.de7ec7ed.com/2013/05/ssh-daemon-samsung-chromebook-exynos.html

[2]: https://sites.google.com/site/cr48ite/getting-technical/remove-rootfs-verification-make-read-write

C++ <3