Console Debian 10 Buster for ASUS Chromebook "Flip" c100p

Steps to get Debian 10 “Buster” running on your c100p with only the console. You can use the LXDE Desktop Environment image from this site if you want the full “Desktop” experience. This image is for advanced users who want a basic Linux with Wifi who want to do their own thing.

Put the c100p in "Developer Mode" and “Enable booting from External Storage”

You can download the ~360MB image here.

I use Balena Etcher (Windows, Linux, MacOS) to write the images to the SD-Card. I also use Win32DiskImager on Windows to read and write images. You can also use the good old “dd” command: dd bs=4M if=</path/to/img> of=</disk/device> if you are old school.

Note: The SD-Card MUST be 8GB or larger!!

• Put the SD Card into your c100p
• Power on
• Press <CTRL> U at the “OS verification is Off” screen
• Yay! You should be booting Console Linux on the c100p!!!

• Default hostname is asus-c100p
• Default login: debian-user/debian-user
• debian-user is uid:2000 gid:2000 (I like to leave uid=gid=1000 for myself)
• debian-user is setup for sudo with “no password” in /etc/sudoers.d/debian-user. You can simply type “sudo su -” to become root
• I have included the following scripts under the root user that may be helpful. Please run them in this order:
  • sudo su -
  • ./wifi.sh - A console Linux is pretty much useless unless you can get on the internet. This script will ask for an SSID and a Wifi password and get your c100p on your wifi from the console. Note this script sometimes takes longer to connect to wifi than the default 30s it waits. If for some reason you cannot connect to wifi you will need to wait a little longer. Just type ip a periodically until you see that the wlan0 interface has an IP address. This of course assumes that your dumb ass has typed in the correct SSID and and password.
  • ./expand-rootfs.sh - This script will expand the root filesystem from the installed 7GB size to take up the rest of the disk.
  • ./do-config.sh - Does some additional configuration:
    • Copies config files from /root/config to the correct places:
      • /etc/udev/rules.d/51-backlight-rules - Fixes udev for brightnessctl
      • /etc/modprobe.d/alsa.conf - gets sound working
      • /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/pc - attempts to enable the top row Chromebook media keys. See /root/config/pc.orig for the original keymap
    • Reconfigures the openssh server keys from the default installed image.
    • Rebuilds the shared-mime-info
  • ./pkg-hist.sh - This script lists any packages you have installed manually. At install and boot it will show nothing since you have installed no packages.
• At this point:
  • Create a new user
  • After logging in as your new user, delete debian-user
  • Set a root password
  • sudo apt-update && sudo apt upgrade
  • Go nuts installing packages!!
  • After installing some packages - Maybe eject your SD Card and take a backup of your SD Card image using something like Win32DiskImager