A build system for making blobless Debian and mainline Linux kernel with support for libre ath9k wireless, dmcrypt/LUKS root partition encryption, and graphics acceleration using panfrost
Supports the following Devices:
- armhf cpu:
- Asus C201 (C201P) (C201PA) (veyron-speedy)
- Asus C100 (veyron-minnie)
- BETA Asus Chromebit CS10 (veyron-mickey)
- arm64 cpu:
- BETA Samsung Chromebook Plus V1 (XE513C24) (gru-kevin)
- ALPHA Asus C101p (gru-bob)
Build Debian filesystem with:
- No blobs, anywhere.
- Sources from only main, not contrib or non-free which keeps Debian libre.
- Currently PrawnOS supports gnome for desktop environment
- full root filesystem encryption
- mesa with support for panfrost for graphics acceleration
- functional sound, touchpad, keyboard mappings
Build a deblobbed mainline kernel with:
- Patches for reliable USB on veyron devices.
- Patches to support the custom GPT partition table required to boot on veyron devices.
- Support for Atheros AR9271 and AR7010 WiFi dongles.
- Support for CSR8510 (and possibly other) bluetooth dongles.
Don't want to use one of the two USB ports for the WiFi dongle? check out this
Combined with Libreboot, an AR9271 or AR7010 WiFi dongle, and a libre OS (like Debian with the main repos, the one built by PrawnOS) the Asus c201 is a fully libre machine with no blobs, or microcode, or Intel Management Engine.
WARNING: flashing libreboot to asus c201 chromebooks that have recently been updated to a new version of chromeOS may leave the device in a non-functional (bricked) state.
If you do not have a way to recover your device by using an external flasher as described in the second part of this page https://libreboot.org/docs/install/c201.html it would be safest to wait until this issue is resolved. I have opened a bug with libreboot, which has been archived here https://notabug.org/libreboot/obsolete-repository-preserved-for-historical-purposes/issues/666 If you have any information that may help with debugging, please post it there.
The install process of PrawnOS does not flash your bios, so it is safe to use along with the default coreboot/depthcharge and does not risk bricking your device
In the world of free and open-source software, the term is used to refer to proprietary device drivers, which are distributed without their source code, exclusively through binary code; in such use, the term binary blob is common. wikipedia
If you don't want to or can't build the image, you can find downloads under https://github.com/SolidHal/PrawnOS/releases
Building PrawnOS has been tested on Debian 11 Buster
Debian Bullseye is the only build environment that is supported. These packages are required:
apt install --no-install-recommends --no-install-suggests \
bc binfmt-support bison build-essential bzip2 ca-certificates cgpt cmake cpio debhelper \
debootstrap device-tree-compiler devscripts file flex g++ gawk gcc gcc-aarch64-linux-gnu \
gcc-arm-none-eabi git gpg gpg-agent kmod libc-dev libncurses-dev libssl-dev lzip make \
parted patch pbuilder qemu-user-static quilt rsync sudo texinfo u-boot-tools udev \
Clone this Git repo: git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/SolidHal/PrawnOS
All make commands required a TARGET=$ARCH to specify either armhf or arm64. See the top of the README for if you don't know which your device is. armhf and arm64 builds can live side by side in the same git checkout.
Build the PrawnOS-*-.img by running sudo make image TARGET=$ARCH
Write the 2GB image to a flash drive. Make sure to replace $USB_DEVICE with the desired target flash drive or SD card device. If you're not familiar with dd, check out Debian's how to page https://www.debian.org/CD/faq/#write-usb
sudo dd if=PrawnOS-*.img of=/dev/$USB_DEVICE bs=50M status=progress; sync
Enabling developer mode is required to install PrawnOS. Note that enabling developer mode WILL ERASE ALL LOCALLY STORED DATA.
First, shutdown and power off the chromebook. Once powered off, hold the 'ESCAPE' and 'REFRESH' (F3) buttons, and while continuing to hold those two buttons, press and release the 'POWER' button.
The chromebook should power on and show a white screen, with a message saying: "Chrome OS is missing or damaged. Please insert a recovery USB stick or SD card."
Press 'CTRL' + 'D' to continue.
A second screen will appear, saying: "To turn OS verification OFF, press ENTER. Your system will reboot and local data will be cleared. To go back, press ESC."
As it says, press 'ENTER'.
The third screen will inform you that OS verification is disabled:
Press 'CTRL' + 'D' to continue.
Your system is now transitioning to developer mode. You have 30 seconds to cancel this by powering off your chromebook:
Otherwise, sit back and wait.
Your chromebook is now erasing local data and preparing developer mode:
Your system will again show the 'OS verification is off' screen:
Press 'CTRL' + 'D' to continue.
Your chromebook should now show the welcome screen. You'll notice that 'debugging features' are now possible:
Clicking 'Enable debugging features' doesn't actually work here, so don't try. Instead, press 'CTRL' + 'ALT' + 'REFRESH' (F3) to open a vtty.
Log in as 'root', there is no password. Finally, enable booting PrawnOS from USB/SD:
To enable booting unsigned media:
# crossystem dev_boot_signed_only=0
To enable USB booting:
# crossystem dev_boot_usb=1
Finally, reboot or shutdown the system:
# reboot
On each subsequent boot, you'll see the 'OS verification is off' screen.
If you haven't enabled developer mode, see Enable Developer Mode
After rebooting/powering on, at the 'OS verification is off' screen, press 'CTRL' + 'U' to boot from USB/SD. Or 'CTRL' + 'D' to boot from the internal emmc.
There are two ways to use PrawnOS.
The first and recommended option is to install it on a device other than the one you wrote the PrawnOS image to. click here
- This lets you install PrawnOS to the internal emmc, an SD card or a USB device
- This allows you to setup root encryption
- Installing to an external device allows you to try PrawnOS without removing Chrome OS or whatever Linux you are running on your internal storage (emmc), but USB drives especially are a much slower experience as the c201 only has USB 2.0.
- The internal emmc is much faster than a usb device or sd card for both reads and writes, data from some tests is available in #133
- If you want to boot from external media, I would suggest using an SD card.
The second option is to boot from the external USB or SD device you wrote the image to, and expand the image to take up the entire device. click here
- Expanding the PrawnOS image allows you to boot PrawnOS from the same USB or SD device that you wrote the image to
- Expansion does NOT support root encryption. For root encryption the filesystem must be written after the encrypted root is created.
Now on the C201, insert the drive you wrote the PrawnOS image to. Press control+u at boot to boot from the external drive.
If you are running stock coreboot and haven't flashed Libreboot, you will first have to enable developer mode and enable USB / external device booting:
At the prompt, login as root. The password is blank.
Now insert the other USB device or SD card you would like to install PrawnOS on. If you want to boot from the internal emmc, you have nothing to insert! Note: If you are installing to an external device, the filesystem portion may take a loooong time (20 minutes). This is because we are reading from one external device (the boot device) and writing to another external device. This more than saturates the USB and/or SD bus.
WARNING! THIS WILL ERASE YOUR INTERNAL EMMC STORAGE (your Chrome OS install or other Linux install and all of the associated user data) OR WHATEVER EXTERNAL DEVICE YOU CHOOSE AS YOUR INSTALL TARGET. Make sure to back up any data you would like to keep before running this.
Run:
InstallPrawnOS
Choose Install and follow the prompts. This will ask what device you want to install to and setup root encryption with a custom initramfs and dmcrypt/LUKS if you want.
If you are curious how the initramfs, and root partition encryption work on PrawnOS check out the Initramfs and Encryption section in DOCUMENTATION.md
If you run in to any problems please open an issue.
If you install to the internal emmc this will show a bunch of scary red warnings that are a result of the emmc (internal storage) having a few unwritable (bad) blocks at the beginning of the device and the kernel message level being set low for debugging. They don't effect anything long-term. All C201s have these bad blocks at the beginning of the emmc
After the partitioning and the filesystem copy is complete, it will prompt you to install the gnome desktop environment as well as sound, trackpad, and Xorg configurations It will also prompt you to make a new user that automatically gets sudo privileges.
After reboot, remove the external media you had booted from originally. If you installed to the internal emmc press control+d, if you installed to an external device press control+u
If you press nothing, it will boot to the internal storage by default.
Congratulations! Your computer is now a Prawn! https://sprorgnsm.bandcamp.com/track/the-prawn-song
Now on the C201, insert the drive you wrote the PrawnOS image to. Press control+u at boot to boot from the external drive.
If you are running stock coreboot and haven't flashed Libreboot, you will first have to enable developer mode and enable USB / external device booting. A quick search should get you some good guides, but if you're having issues feel free to open an issue here on github.
At the prompt, login as root. The password is blank. Run:
InstallPrawnOS
Choose Expand at the prompt
If you run in to any problems please open an issue.
Now you can choose to install the packages, which are the gnome desktop enviroment as well as sound, trackpad, and Xorg configurations. It will also prompt you to make a new user that automatically gets sudo privileges.
If you choose in install the packages, when installation is complete it will reboot.
Press control+u at boot once again, and you'll get to a login screen.
Congratulations! Your computer is now a Prawn! https://sprorgnsm.bandcamp.com/track/the-prawn-song
Say no at the prompt to install packages and a desktop environment. Congratulations: you are done! Welcome to PrawnOS. You should probably change the root password and make a user, but I'm not your boss or anything so I'll leave that to you.
If have a basic environment without a desktop environment you can connect to WiFi using nmtui and it's menus to connect; or issue the following nmcli commands:
nmcli device wifi list
nmcli --ask device wifi connect "Network_name" # The --ask will prompt you for the password so it doesn't remain in your shell history
When that finishes, you should have access to the internet.
The components of PrawnOS are now packaged, making upgrades much easier. You have two options:
- filesystem packages are located under
filesystem/packagesall can be built by callingmake filesystem_packages_clean && make filesystem_packagesor they can be built individually by going to the specific package and runningmake clean && make
once the .deb is built, move it to your PrawnOS device and run sudo apt install ./<package-name>.deb
- kernel packages are located under
kernel/packagesthe kernel image package can be built by runningmakein theprawnos-linux-image-armhfdirectory once the.debis built, move it to your PrawnOS device and runsudo apt install ./<package-name>.deb
sudo apt upgrade
The kernel flashing script can be found at /etc/prawnos/kernel/FlashKernelPartition.sh
Easily flash a specific kernel by running it like this:
/etc/prawnos/kernel/FlashKernelPartition.sh vmlinux.kpart
Some useful things can be found in DOCUMENTATION.md including making the coreboot screen less annoying and less beepy
(All of these should be run as root or with sudo to avoid issues) The makefile automates many processes that make debugging the kernel or the filesystem easier. To begin with:
make kernel_config cross compiles make menuconfig Cross compiling is required for any of the Linux kernel make options that edit the kernel config, as the Linux kernel build system makes assumptions that change depending on what platform it is targeting.
make kernel builds just the kernel
make filesystem builds the -BASE filesystem image with no kernel
make initramfs builds the PrawnOS-initramfs.cpio.gz, which can be found in /build
make image builds the initramfs image, builds the kernel, builds the filesystem if a -BASE image doesn't exist, and combines the two into a new PrawnOS.img using kernel_install
make kernel_install Installs a newly built kernel into a previously built PrawnOS.img-BASE.
make write_image PDEV=/dev/sdX Does everything make image does but then also checks /dev/sdX is available and writes the image to it using a sane blocksize and runs sync
You can use the environment variable PRAWNOS_SUITE to use a Debian suite other than Bullseye. For example, to use Debian sid, you can build with sudo PRAWNOS_SUITE=sid make image
You can use the environment variable PRAWNOS_DEBOOTSTRAP_MIRROR to use a non-default Debian mirror with debootstrap. For example, to use Debian's Tor onion service mirror with debootstrap, you can build with sudo PRAWNOS_DEBOOTSTRAP_MIRROR=http://2s4yqjx5ul6okpp3f2gaunr2syex5jgbfpfvhxxbbjwnrsvbk5v3qbid.onion/debian make image.
You can use the environment variable PRAWNOS_KVER to use a non-default kernel version. For example, sudo PRAWNOS_KVER=5.10.61 make image.
crossystem is installed from the debian repos and mosys (a dependency of crossystem, and all around useful tool) is built and installed as part of the PrawnOS filesystem build.
Specifically, enabling dev_boot_signed_only will prevent PrawnOS from booting, as no key is stored in the bootloader for the PrawnOS Linux kernel
Its also a bad idea to disable dev_boot_usb unless you are positive you will always be able to boot to the internal emmc.
Unless you are running libreboot, the only way to recover if you get in one of these states is to reinstall chromeos using recovery media
Kernels signature verification:
sudo crossystem dev_boot_signed_only=1 enable
sudo crossystem dev_boot_signed_only=0 disable
External media boot:
sudo crossystem dev_boot_usb=1 enable
sudo crossystem dev_boot_usb=0 disable
Legacy payload boot:
sudo crossystem dev_boot_legacy=1 enable
sudo crossystem dev_boot_legacy=0 disable
Default boot medium:
sudo crossystem dev_default_boot=disk internal storage
sudo crossystem dev_default_boot=usb external media
sudo crossystem dev_default_boot=legacy legacy payload
Dump system state:
sudo crossystem
View mosys command tree:
sudo mosys -t
On older PrawnOS releases or other distributions, you can run the buildCrossystem.sh script located in scripts/InstallScripts/ to build and install mosys and install crossystem
sudo /InstallScripts/buildCrossystem.sh
Sick of having a USB dongle on the outside of your machine for wi-fi? Want to be able to use two USB devices at once without a hub? Check out the instructions here for the c201: https://github.com/SolidHal/AsusC201-usb-wifi-from-webcam And here for the samsung chromebook plus v1: https://github.com/SolidHal/Samsung_Chromebook_plus_v1_wifi_from_webcam Warning: decent soldering skills required
The pulse audio mixer will only run if you are logged in as a non-root account. This is an issue (feature?) of pulse audio
IRC - You can find PrawnOS on the #prawnos channel on libera
Thanks to dimkr for his great devsus scripts for the Chrome OS 3.14 kernel, from which PrawnOS took much inspiration https://github.com/dimkr/devsus
Because PrawnOS started as a fork of devsus-3.14, some of this repo's ancient history can be found at https://github.com/SolidHal/devsus/tree/hybrid_debian
PrawnOS is free and unencumbered software released under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2; see COPYING for the license text. For a list of its authors and contributors, see AUTHORS.
