Easiest way to share files from Crouton to Chromeos

March 06, 2018

Hi! In this post I'm discussing the easiest way to share files of my Ubuntu crouton with Chromeos.

The problem

Files in my crouton home-folder are not exposed to Chromeos. I want to be able to use Gimp, and use that file in my Chromeos or Android Apps.

Solution	Result
SSH mount using the chromeos file-manager	Cumbersome, also seemed buggy with some chromeos apps (Caret-T)
Put file in ~/Downloads folder	Cumbersome, and results in messy ~/Downloads. Temporary files get backed up by google (large videofiles etc)

Just put this in `/etc/rc.local’

FOLDER=/home/yourusername/projects
for i in $FOLDER/*; do 
  mount --bind "$i" "/media/removable/USB Drive/$FOLDER/$(basename "$i")" 
done

don’t forget to replace ‘yourusername’ with..well..your username

I have a project-folder in both my home-folder, and on my usb stick
The usb stick project-folder contains projects which im not actively working on (github checkouts/libraries etc)
The project-folder in my home-directory contains projects im actively working on
During crouton initialization, it links the homefolder-projectdirs to my USBstick (using mount –bind)

Benefits:

Chromeos can see the USB stick
In case my usb stick dies, I’ll only lose those (USB) projects which are not actively worked on