Running Chromium OS from bootable USB on MacBook?

I wanted to try the Chromium OS builds from http://chromeos.hexxeh.net/, but failed to create a bootable USB drive.

I followed the steps on the site:

  1. Download the Mac builder
  2. Download the vanilla .iso
  3. Run the builder (and tell it to use the .iso)

But when I tried to reboot and hold down the option key, the USB drive didn't show up.

When I rebooted back into OS X, it complained that the USB drive wasn't recognized. In disk utility it showed several partitions.

Has anyone had experience with Chrome OS on a MacBook?


Solution 1:

From my experience you are best downloading VirtualBox and launching it as a full-screen virtual appliance. Apple's EFI doesn't like to load USB drives that aren't OS X or Windows 7 installers. I have run into this same issue trying to run Ubuntu and Haiku from USB. If you have an optical drive you are better off burning the ISO to DVD and booting that way. You could also checkout rEFIt at your own risk as an alternate boot loader.

By the way it is normal for OS X to not recognize the format of the USB you created. That is because it is probably not in HFS+, NTFS or FAT. Not that it makes it any easier to boot.