[vajonam]

I have a question about the AppleTV's recovery process

• Some times I have noticed that ATV1 goes into the recovery state, which means boots up with the apple logo and then asks me to set language. If I then do a reboot, it reboots file into the atv-bootloader mach_kernel and then into my linux distro
  

I have the OSBoot's kernel replaced with the custom mach_kernel built for my image, and the .plist passing the right parameters. I am not using any USB disk, replaced the Mac stuff on the ATV HDD to boot 8.04 ubuntu

I notice this sometimes after a quick power cycle. doing a "sudo reboot" from the command always reboots back into linux.

What causes the ATV to think it needs recovery and boot into the "Recovery" partition?

[davilla]

If efi firmware tried to boot from OSBoot and does not like something about it or cannot find it, it defaults back to recovery.

The why would require setting the kernel boot args to -v (verbose), then watching for messages until it does it. Better fun watching paint dry.

[vajonam]

If efi firmware tried to boot from OSBoot and does not like something about it or cannot find it, it defaults back to recovery.

The why would require setting the kernel boot args to -v (verbose), then watching for messages until it does it. Better fun watching paint dry.

Right, thanks for your input. I guess I can get rid of my OSBoot partitions completely, which means it will always fall into Recovery and then have it kexec my kernel. I think this is way Sam's image does it.

[davilla]

It will boot a few seconds faster if there is an OSBoot present, even unpopulated. efi firmware is persistent and looks around before it bails back to recovery.