Try Chrome OS Canary Without Risking Your Chromebook's Stability

There's been some buzz recently about Kenny Strawn's discovery of Chrome OS Canary (nice work Kenny!). If you're not aware, Canary is a version of Chrome OS that is even more up to date with code changes and new features than dev channel. So it goes stable --> beta --> dev --> canary with stable being the most stable, reliable and least often updated version and canary being the least stable and least reliable but most often updated. A Canary version of the Chrome browser has been available and can be run in parallel with other Chrome channels on Windows and Mac for some time but there's been no publicly known equivalent for Chrome OS until Kenny's discovery and normally, your Chromebook is only on one channel of Chrome OS, switching between channels meant a USB recovery or powerwash.

So Canary is going to give you the latest and greatest Chrome OS features weeks or months before stable channel gets them but you sacrifice the stability of your Chromebook because Canary isn't tested nearly as heavily as stable channel is. What if we could run stable channel on our Chromebook and only boot into Canary channel when we wanted to test something or check out a new feature? Wouldn't that be handy? Well, here are instructions:

1. To get started, make sure your Chromebook is in developer mode. Model-specific instructions can be found here.
2. Turn your Chromebook off then turn it back on but do not login. Make sure you have a WiFi or Ethernet connection configured at this point. 3G/4G is not recommended. Press CTRL+ALT+=> (=> is the forward arrow where the F2 key would be on a PC). Do not use the normal CTRL+ALT+T method to get a shell. Use the CTRL+ALT+=> method while no one is logged in.
3. Login as user chronos, no password is needed.
4. Run the command:
   
   sudo crossystem dev_boot_usb=1
   
   this tells your Chromebook to allow booting from USB / SD Card. Note that not all Chromebooks can boot from all USB or SD Card ports. For example, the Acer C710 can't boot from an SD Card and the Samsung Chromebook can't boot from the blue USB 3.0 port. You'll need to use a port on your device that supports booting. When in doubt, start with one of the black USB ports and go from there.
5. Stick a USB or SD Card of at least 8gb size in your Chromebook and run the command:
   
   rootdev -s -d
   you'll get output like:
   
   /dev/sda
   
   or it might say /dev/mmcblk0. Whichever it is, that is the device for your Chromebooks primary drive.
6. Now run:
   
   sudo fdisk -l | grep Disk
   
   this will list out all drives your Chromebook sees. Your Chromebook's main drive will be listed and you'll see some devices we don't care about like /dev/mapper/blahblahblah. We're looking for the USB or SD Card you inserted (compare sizes). On an Intel Chromebook with a USB drive it's likely to show as /dev/sdb, with an SD Card it's likely to be /dev/mmcblk0. On a ARM-based Chromebook, a USB drive is likely to be /dev/sda and a SD Card, /dev/mmcblk0. Make sure you've got the right device and remember what it is for the next step.
7. Now we can run:
   
   sudo chromeos-install --skip_src_removable --skip_dst_removable --skip_vblock --dst <insert /dev/whatever from above step>
   
   chromeos-install is a script to copy Chrome OS to another drive. Normally the script is meant to copy from a removable device to a SSD or hard drive but we're going in the reverse direction, thus we need the --skip_src_removable and --skip_dst_removable options to turn off those checks. The --skip_vblock option is needed to prevent an error message that should not matter anyway. The --dst option allows you to specify the destination device you determined in the previous 2 steps. So on my Intel-based Pixel Chromebook and using a USB drive I would run exactly:
   
   sudo chromeos-install --skip_src_removable --skip_dst_removable --skip_vblock --dst /dev/sdb
   
   this command will output some details about the install process and may spit out errors if there's trouble copying to your drive (USB drives and SD Cards fail after awhile, get a new one if you need it).
8. When the process completes, your Chromebook will reboot. Now with the USB/SD Card still inserted, if you press CTRL+U on the keyboard at the ugly computer screen you'll boot from your new installation on the external card instead of the internal drive. You'll probably notice it's slower, USB 2.0 is very slow compared to SSDs. On first boot, the Chrome OS installation on the external drive will want to repair itself by wiping out the stateful partition (note that this is the stateful partition on your external drive, not the one on your internal drive which should remain untouched). Eventually, after a reboot, you should see Chrome OS boot to the setup process.
9. Lets confirm we're booted off of the external device by running:
   
   rootdev -s -d
   
   this time, we should see the USB/SD Card's device listed instead of the internal SSDs so we know we're running off the external device.
10. Now we've got a separate Chrome OS install that we can boot into at will with CTRL+U instead of CTRL+D but we need to switch it to Canary channel. That's easy enough to do by running:
    
    sudo update_engine_client --channel canary-channel
    sudo update_engine_client --update
    this will install the latest Canary channel update for us on the external device, again leaving the internal device untouched. Now we're up and running! Canary channel without the risk.

New year Gift for you! Get a Skype Premium Account worth 71.88 Euros for Free

I found a new year gift, so i would like to share with you to all my readers. Skype, one of the biggest chat clients has launched a new project called “The Skype Collaboration Project” under which it is providing free group video calling and a few other things, all for free for one entire year. The collaboration project is open for everyone to join, and get those free credits. Here is how you can get one, and enjoy the free calling, which is worth around 71 euros if you are looking to get it directly.

Here are the different advantages with the Collaboration project from Skype:

Free group video calls
Free group screen sharing
No advertising
Live chat customer support

How to Get Free Skype Credits

To get the free credits, you need to visit this page and enter your email address and check the box that says: “Tick this box to receive regular updates from the Skype Collaboration Project”.

Once done, you will just need to wait for the next 48 hours, and any time during that, Skype would send you a mail with a special voucher code to use and redeem it on the website.

You would receive a mail from Skype with the voucher code to redeem. The same mail would have the link to redeem the code. If not, directly go to skype.com/go/voucher



Enter the voucher code that you received from Skype in the mail. Then check the “I agree to the Skype Terms of Service” and click on Redeem voucher or prepaid card.



.
Once you enter, it would take you to the success page saying that the code was accepted, and it should not take more than 15 minutes for the order to be processed, but in actual it takes just 2-3 minutes and a notification appears showing that your order is processed.


Go to the Payment settings page to verify it, and you would see the voucher delivered already in the account.




So, that was quite simple. No catch, this one is directly coming from Skype thus you don’t need to run around with any special tricks because you would be a part of the Collaboration project the company is running. The best part of this is the free group video calling as well as the group screen sharing, which is something very good for the companies where online discussions are regularly done. As a part of this, Skype is also going to provide live customer support for one year, another added advantage.

NOTE Well now this offer will not last forever, make sure you redeem your code before 30th April 2014 as that's the deadline for this offer. Well hope you will enjoy this awesome offer by skype, so do like and share this post enjoy.

If like my post and it made you happy, share this with your friends :) Sharing is caring...

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