Installing/Panther

Installing GalliumOS on the Asus Chromebox M004U (Panther)

This tutorial is written in sections. It's easier to follow and manage this way. (This tutorial does NOT explain how to dual boot ChromeOS and GalliumOS. See chrx for those details.)

Download and Write GalliumOS to USB

1. Download the appropriate ISO from here. For this tutorial, you’ll need the Chromebox Haswell ISO.
2. Write the image to your USB drive by following the instructions found here.

Enable Developer Mode and Boot Flags

1. With the Chromebox powered off, insert a paper clip and press the RECOVERY BUTTON (just above the kensington lock) and press the Power button to turn it on. Release the RECOVERY BUTTON after a second.
2. At the Recovery screen press Ctrl-D. It will ask you to confirm by pressing the RECOVERY BUTTON again. It will now enable Developer Mode. It will take about 10-15 minutes to complete.
3. You’ll see a white screen after rebooting. Press Ctrl-D and you’ll boot into ChromeOS with Developer Mode enabled.
4. Connect to the Internet and accept the terms and agreements. You don’t have to login to ChromeOS using your account (you can if you want to, but I didn’t). Login as Guest and open up a Crosh session by pressing Ctrl-Alt-T. Type shell and hit enter to open bash. The prompt should look like this: chronos@localhost / $
5. Type sudo crossystem dev_boot_legacy=1 and hit enter.

Update your Chromebox firmware

You’re now ready to flash your Chromebox.

1. Open a new Crosh session by pressing Ctrl-Alt-T. Close the other one.
2. Firmware options and instructions here.

Boot from USB

1. Reboot your Chromebox
2. Press Ctrl-L at the scary white screen.
3. Press the ESC key when you see the prompt to do so. You’ll now be in the boot menu.(If you don’t press ESC in time just reboot and do it again.)
4. At the boot menu you’ll see your boot options. Select to boot from USB.
5. You’ll now get the option to live boot or install GalliumOS. You want to live boot.
6. Test GalliumOS. Explore until you’re sure everything works fine. If you decide to install GalliumOS (and why wouldn’t you?), don’t install it while you’re live booted. For some reason that didn’t work for me, and I had to do it over again. Instead, reboot and follow the above steps until you get to the live boot or install GalliumOS menu. Choose Install GalliumOS. There’ll be a few prompts during the installation process.

Success

You now have GalliumOS installed. How cool is that?

If you run into problems or have any questions, the awesome people at #GalliumOS are happy to help in any way they can. You can also post on /r/galliumos.

Sources

https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices/asus-chromebox

https://johnlewis.ie/custom-chromebook-firmware/rom-download/

https://wiki.galliumos.org/Installing/Preparing