Flash DietPi from Chromebook

Community Tutorials
1

Is anyone interested in a how-to on flashing the dietpi image from a chromebook?

If so, let me know, and I’ll type it up.

-rob

2

That would be awesome.

If you are in mood, you could add the information directly to our new documentation:
https://dietpi.com/docs/user-guide_installation/#1-download-and-extract-the-dietpi-disk-image
https://github.com/MichaIng/DietPi-Docs/blob/dev/docs/user-guide_installation.md
Else, with your permissions, we’d implement the information into the docs :slight_smile:.

I guess the unarchiver will be a different tool on Chrome OS and not even sure if Belana Etcher works on it?

3

I’ll update the docs. no problem.

the best unarchiver that I’ve found so far is the “Wicked Good Unarchiver”
and the flashing tool is Google’s “Chromebook Recovery Utility”… It has an option to select a local file rather than the backup image of your chromebook in the cloud. :slight_smile:

I’ll include links to the Web Store for the apps along with the instructions. It’ll be tomorrow though.

-rob

4

first pass on the instructions…

These instructions should work on any chromebook with an SDCard reader or USB drive with SDCard reader, however, to date, I have only tested them on a 2020 model Samsung Galaxy Chromebook and a 2015 Toshiba Chromebook 2 (both with intel CPU’s). The Samsung is running stable channel ChromeOS 86. The Toshiba is running developer channel ChromeOS 88 (but not Linux(Beta) compatible).

You will need 2 pieces of software from the Chrome web store:

Once you have these utilities:

  1. Downloaded the DietPi image file from DietPi.com’s website, and, using the Files app, view the downloaded file in the “Downloads” folder.
  2. Right-click on the 7z file and choose “Open with Wicked Good Unarchiver”
  3. Drag the .img file from there to the “Downloads” folder. This will extract the file from the archive.
  4. In the Files app, browse back to the “Downloads” folder again, and rename the .img file. The Chromebook Recovery Utility does not recognize other file extensions other than .bin, so add “.bin” to the end of the filename. (ex. DietPi_RPi-ARMv8-Buster.img.bin )
  5. Insert your SDCard. ChromeOS will automatically mount the drive, but do not worry. The recovery utility will unmount it to write the image.
  6. Now, we can open the Chromebook Recovery Utility.
  7. Select “Use local image” from the Gear dropdown menu on the top-right. Browse to the “Downloads” folder and select the .bin file (from step 4)
  8. The next screen asks you to select the media to write to. This is where you select your SDCard. Then select “Continue”
  9. The last screen gives you a final chance to confirm that you’ve selected the correct media. The title bar will also show the name of the file that you selected. If all is correct, click the “Create Now” button.
  10. Once you click the “Create Now” button, you’ll be shown a progress bar and a warning to not remove the media while it is writing.
  11. After the write is complete, you’ll be shown a Checkmark icon and a “Done” button. You may now remove/eject the SDCard from your Chromebook and click the “Done” button.
  12. The SDCard may now be inserted into your SBC and DietPi installation can begin.
5

great tutorial, i got it to work with my chromebook. BUT my zero w is currently sitting at a “login prompt” (as confirmed with my microHDMI adapter…) and it’s wanting me to login to continue the setup i assume? But…being a zero w the other USB slot is being used by the wifi dongle (ordered the wrong pi zero apparently…lol and it didn’t have onboard wifi)

any tips?

6

I just opened an issue to port those into your docs: https://github.com/MichaIng/DietPi-Docs/issues/345
I’m still thinking how to structure the docs best to cover especially 7z extraction and img flashing for all “host” OS’es without causing too giant DOM and doubled text in the multiple image type sections (SBC images, PC images, VM images).

ahoier
Check out: https://dietpi.com/docs/install/#3-prepare-the-first-boot
Above that header “Click here if you want to pre-configure WiFi network”. Then you can connect via SSH to run through the setup steps and don’t require an attached screen + keyboard.

7

maybe the WiFi dongle connected to USB is using a diffetent adapter than wlan0. If this is the case, interfaces would need to be configured manually. But hard to check without keyboard.

8

This would only be the case if there was a second WiFi adapter present. And even if the Pi Zero is actually a Zero W and has an onboard WiFi adapter, then the question is why that onboard WiFi adapter was not configured successfully :wink:.
The kernel assigns these indices from 0 to N in the order adapters are detected, so wlan1 can only exist if there was a wlan0 detected before.