Since its release a couple of years back, Chromium OS has been a favorite among low-end/old PC owners, with its simple, no-nonsense interface, cost free nature and fast and efficient performance. But with no official build from Google many have taken upon themselves to build Chromium OS. One of the better ones is Neverware CloudReady, providing a near Chrome OS interface, stable builds and regular updates. Although clean and efficient, it can be a right pain in the rear when installing with its non-standard “BIN” file format and eye watering amount of partitions. It can drive one insane if you plan to install it in a VM. That’s why you came here!
After scouring the internet for instructions on installing it on VMware Workstation, we came to a conclusion that there is no official (or for that matter, straightforward and proven) way to install it. Most people claim that they can use the linux tool “dd” to dump it. But on our tests we found that to be a tad bit difficult and time consuming (seeing as how one will need linux and quite a lot of time). So we brew our own portion: a straightforward, fool-proof method of installing Clouready on VMware products (tests on VirtualBox proved futile (no graphics) and only sometimes worked in Parallels). It’s so fool proof that you don’t even need VT-x/AMD-v. How cool is that?
To begin with, you’ll need a (separate) VM with either Windows, Mac or Linux already installed. Then you will need a marvelous little tool called Etcher (Available for all above mentioned OSs). Also, we found that working with the 32bit version of CloudReady plays better than the 64bit version (But the 64bit version is quite alright if you have a sufficiently powerful PC (with VT-x/AMD-v)that can run 64bit guests). And you will quite obviously need a VMware Product (Fusion, Workstation Player/Pro, ESXi etc.). We’ll be using VMware Fusion on an iMac Pro with a secondary Windows VM.
Note: a simplified summary of the entire process is at the bottom of the post. And here’s the accompanying video.
|Etcher|
First, extract the BIN file out of the ZIP file you downloaded into one of the shared folders of your Windows/Linux/Mac VM.
Create a VM (for Cloudready) [“linux 3.x”, minimum 724MB RAM, 20GB SATA Disk, minimum 64MB Video Memory, Accelerated Graphics, USB 3.0 controller, no Optical Drive, EFI Boot enabled (no secure boot), NAT Network Adapter]
Now assign the disk you made in the above step on to the Windows/Linux/Mac VM and power that on.
When the VM has finished powering up, initialize the new disk (using Diskpart, Disk Utilities, fdisk, GParted etc.) with an MBR partition table (I did not make a typo. That is MBR not GPT), and format it as NTFS/EXT4/FAT32.
Then open Etcher inside the VM. Click on the cog wheel (Settings icon) on the top right corner.
Now set it to “Unsafe Mode” (and also disable “validate write”, to speed up the whole process)
Click back. Choose the ClouReady BIN file and the disk from the ClouReady VM and click flash.
The flash will take anything between 30 Seconds to 30 minutes. Once it finishes the flash, shutdown that VM and remove the CloudReady VM’s disk.
Now focus on the CloudReady VM. Open its VMX file (using a text editor) and put the following line at the end on the file (with the quotes on “FALSE”).
mouse.vusb.startConnected = “FALSE”
[If you’re worried what it’ll do: CloudReady has a mouse bug that makes it impossible to direct mouse clicks. This is technically the same as turning off “Mouse Integration” in VBox]
Save the VMX file and poweron the CloudReady VM. You will first get a fleeting glance at the CloudReady logo and the Startup screen in which you can login to your Google account.
CloudReady plays best with VMware. It’s even got full WebGL 2 Hardware Accelaration.
If you found that a bit confusing, he’s the summary: Get Etcher, CR (CloudReady) 32bit image, VMware virtualization product and a separate Windows VM (not the one that you install CR in).
Attach disk of the CR VM to the Windows VM.
Use Etcher to image the CR BIN file to that disk.
Remove disk from Windows VM, attach to CR VM, Power on CR VM. Done!
Help Ahoy! 
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add this line to the vmx to set firmware as EFI:
firmware="efi"LikeLike
OK, problem solved. Once I installed a trial version of Workstation Pro, the ability to designate the CR VM HDD as SATA and the firmware as EFI, I’m able to boot right into CloudReady. Jeees. Probably spent 15 hours trying to get Workstation Player to work, to no avail.
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I upgraded to the VMWare Pro 15 trial. Changing the HDD SATA setting didn’t work for me. I upgraded the VM from version 11.x to 15 and it booted right up.
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I followed your instructions precisely, but when I boot the CR VM at conclusion of installation, I just get a black screen in with no error messages. A couple of things I’m unsure of though. There seems to be no setting in the CR VM that allows me to enable EFI, like the radio dial that exists in VirtualBox. Also, does the virtual HDD that is created in the CR VM need to be SATA? When I create the VM for CR, it populates the machine with a SCSI drive with no alternative to choose otherwise. Only after I’ve done this am I able to go back in and add a second HDD that is SATA. Should I be flashing to the added SATA drive and deleting the original SCSI drive?
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A little more research reveals that (in Workstation Player but not Pro) you have to modify the .vmx file by adding the following lines:
firmware = “efi”
uefi.secureBoot.enabled = “TRUE” [or “FALSE” in our case]
uefi.allowAuthBypass = “TRUE”
bios.bootDelay = “7000”
The delay gives you enough time to press F2 so that you can get into efi.
So now I have efi enabled, but I still get the same behavior, the black screen with no error message. Tried by both ways, SCSI and SATA, to no avail. Interesting to note that that regardless of HDD type, efi doesn’t reference a SATA drive, only SCSI.
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Is it possible to install vmware tools on a Cloudready VM? If so, how, w/o an optical drive?
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You could technically extract the tools (manually, in the host, using 7zip etc.) and put them on a USB storage drive and mount it on the cloudready vm. but the tools themselves wont install.
if you know how to install VMware Tools on a CloudReady VM, do let me know!
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