Node and NPM on Chromebook (Chrome OS)

Could you write an article on how to gain rootfs access on the Chromebook. It's been a bit difficult finding and article that clearly states how to do this.

@mnafricano Here you go -
http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/poking-around-your-chrome-os-device

Thanks for the link, I'll be sure to read it. @harshadkale

Your instruction "cd /usr/bin" should be "cd usr/bin" - further into the current directory tree - not from root.

Also (this may be because I am in dev mode with verified boot still), my /usr/bin or lib folders are not writable. I tried to /usr/local/bin, lib, share but that didn't work.

I followed above steps to install node.
The ls command shows that node and npm files are present in usr/local/bin but when I try to execute node from the same directory it says
bash: /usr/local/bin: No such file or directory.

I am having the same problem in that my /usr/bin is not writeable. if I try to execute node in the same directory it's in with ./node -v I get a permission denied. I tried cp * /usr/local, as local was the only writeable directory I could find. When I try to execute node in the local directory I get "can not execute binary."

can you help me figure out how to get node up and running? Thank you so very, very much! BTW: I really enjoyed your Bootcamp 3 tutorials.

max

Update: so using information in the link you provided I made my usr/bin writeable and copied the files into /usr/bin. Now when i try to execute xz or node I get "cannot execute binary file".

Any ideas? Thanks!

I was getting the "cp: cannot create regular file ‘*’: Read-only file system" errors even after enabling dev mode and running:

sudo /usr/share/vboot/bin/make_dev_ssd.sh --remove_rootfs_verification

and:

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

But running:

sudo /usr/share/vboot/bin/make_dev_ssd.sh --remove_rootfs_verification --partitions 2

Fixed that read error but now I get this one:

xz -d node*.tar.xz
bash: /usr/bin/xz: cannot execute binary file

I had the same problems than @maxutter and @dieseltravis: 'cannot execute binary file'

This is caused by the fact that Chrome OS is now on 64 bit CPU, so you need to download the x86_64 files instead of the i864.

See this post for more details: http://blog.diniscruz.com/2014/11/chrome-os-is-now-running-under-64-bit.html

@kgingeri is correct on the typo for directory switching. In both places it should be "cd usr/bin".

@diniscruz is also correct in needing to download the 64 bit versions of both packages.

@harshadkale gives a good official link on making the file system writable, but it throws an error since the command has changed. You will get a suggestion you only do remove rootfs for a specific partition, or do the following for ALL partitions, which is not recommended for safety.
$ sudo /usr/share/vboot/bin/makedevssd.sh --removerootfsverification --partitions N

After all of those differences from these 2013 instructions, I was able to get things to install correctly.

I'm on Acer C720 in dev mode, but i can't continue from 'cp * /usr/bin' even after the @dieseltravis technique
'sudo /usr/share/vboot/bin/makedevssd.sh --removerootfsverification --partitions 2' because i have the "cp: cannot create regular file ‘*’: Read-only file system" errors again and again.

The cp command returns the error "missing destination file operand after '*/usr/bin'"

Any suggestions on how to solve this?

@mlionel92 I think you are missing a space character between '*' and '/usr/bin'

Thanks for putting this together... I am running into an issue where when I try sh install.sh I get a message that node.js is needed. It may be a situation where the cp command is not moving the files to the correct directory.