So I finally decided to make use of some old laptops around office and see if we could make them into “browser machines”

Things should be easy. But I found some issues during install and hope to document my solutions so you may find it helpful:

First, get your Chromium OS (based on AMD or x86 or x64 processors): http://chromium.arnoldthebat.co.uk/index.php?dir=special/ with instructions at http://arnoldthebat.co.uk/wordpress/chromium-os/

Once this is done, boot into Chromium using the USB drive.
After you enter your WiFi details and get to the main chrome browser screen (you can login as guest too), then press Ctrl + Alt + F2 (on windows machines) and get to the command prompt. (This is explained in detail here: http://www.davebennett.tech/how-to-install-chrome-os-on-pc/)

Now, here are some important steps:

  1. Login as chronos with password as password
  2. Figure out which hard drive you want to install on — run the command lsblk
    Output will be like this:

    $ lsblk
NAME           MAJ:MIN  RM  SIZE    RO  TYPE  MOUNTPOINT
sda            8:0      0   238.5G  0   disk
├─sda1         8:1      0   200M    0   part  /boot/efi
├─sda2         8:2      0   500M    0   part  /boot
└─sda3         8:3      0   237.8G  0   part
sdb            253:0    0   50G     0   lvm   
├─sdb1         253:1    0   20G     0   lvm   
└─sdb2         253:2    0   30G     0   lvm
  3. Usually, the partition Chrome OS is running off of (while booted from USB) will be sdb (B for Beer, your USB portable drive) and you want to install to sda (A for apple)
  4. Type /usr/sbin/chromeos-install –skip_src_removable –dst /dev/sda
  5. The two options I have typed above (–skip_src_removable and –dst /dev/sda) are not commonly explained in any single online resources and had to be pieced together from various sources.

What they do is this:
You may get an error Error: Source does not look like a removable device. So the –skip_src_removable takes care of that.

The –dst flag allows you to specifically target what hard drive you want the OS installed on.

So far got one

Good luck.

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