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Apple TV news
#46
Long boot time 30-60 seconds to tux/atv logo) issue solved. I've heard of this but never saw it until recent. This issue is that if the MBR is not a "proper" gpt protected MBR, the AppleTV will refuse to boot the disk first few times it looks around. Eventually, finding nothing else, it will accept the disk and boot.

My original Linux drives (from long ago) were partitioned on OSX so the proper MBR gets installed. I'm now using the patched parted process (which I think also places a MBR) and doing standard Linux distro installs.

My boot method looks for a grub menu.lst so one need to allow grub to install but grub also installs it's own MBR which the AppleTV efi firmware does not accept first time around.

I've placed instructions at http://code.google.com/p/atv-bootloader in the installing linux section and there a good MBR in the download section.

I'll continue to investigate this as it would be nice to have both grub and fast efi boot enabled.
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#47
Did a total reinstall, everything all over again except redoing the partitions. Used the link for the recovery tarball to populate the two paritions, put the boot.efi file with 'em. installed grub this time, and it boots fine on my standard pc.

when i put it back in the atv, same problem. turned on verbosity and its the same error.
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#48
Not a clue, 0xb000000 is the mach kernel load address. It's complaining about "allocating 0x206 pages at 0xb008000", I don't allocate anything in the bootloader so that's boot.efi with the error message.

Need to think on this a bit and try some boot failures after work. Do you have a small USB pen drive? Use patched parted to put a recovery partition and the recovery contents and boot.efi on it. Stick it in and see if it will boot.
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#49
Followed guide all the way over again, including DDing with zeros. Same results? I tried my old patchstick and it boots fine (and fails to patch the original ATV software, of course.) I'm lost. ;]
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#50
when you copied the contents of extracted recovery.tar.gz, did you "cp" or "cp -arp"?
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#51
-arp for sure.
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#52
davilla,
You mentioned you did a standard ubuntu install as well as a mythbuntu one. Doing the standard install how did you get the correct video drivers in place and configured?

I was able to get the system to boot to the desktop with myhtbuntu, but since I am looking to do XBMC I wanted to do the standard ubuntu install. I got the basic system on there and the tv does switch over to ubuntu but after a page or two of startup output it is replaced by just a blinking cursor. I am assuming this is the system trying to display using drivers or configuration which is not compatible with the tv.

thanks for any info,
Andrew
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#53
adefa,
Post the output of the patched parted print command, before you do the print, type "unit s" to change from bytes to sectors. If you want, tar up the contents (minus boot.efi) of Recovery and email it to me so I can check it. It's my name here @4pi.com. My mail server can handle large files.

annagel,
I was almost at the same point as you a few days ago, then I hosed my primary mythtv backend doing silly things with MythBuntu on the AppleTV. You need to get it to boot using "safe mode" that does minimal video probing or force it to use the vesafb. Or boot or chroot into it on standard PC hardware and install the nvidia binary driver using apt-get. Don't manually install from a download from nvidia's web site. This will confuse the Ubuntu install. Google for "Envy" and "Nvidia" and you will find the info.
You can also convert the MythBuntu into a full Ubuntu desktop using apt-get. There's info about that on the MythBuntu web site.
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#54
annagel,

Did you follow the steps for adding "fbcon" and "vesafb" and rebuilding the initramfs. It's the same for Ubuntu 7.10 desktop and MythBuntu 7.10.
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#55
yes I did that, caught onto that pretty early in the process since I forgot the first time and the system didn't get out of the bootloader.

For anyone interested in what I did to get it up:

Steps to get Ubuntu Gutsy working After the install

Go through davilla's steps but before you do

Code:
sudo cp /etc/resolv.conf /media/disk/etc/
sudo mount --bind /proc /media/disk/proc

Now once you are chrooted:

uncomment all the sources...not sure which ones were important in vi 'x' will delete the character under the cursor so just delete the '#' key in front of every comment once you are done :x will exit writing out the new file

Code:
vi /etc/apt/sources.list

Code:
#install ssh
apt-get update
sudo apt-get install openssh-server

hook up the drive and boot, you might see a login prompt you might not I did but my plan was to use ssh anyway so i could sit down and not be looking up at the tv.

Get logged in at the keyboard or via ssh

Code:
sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx-new
sudo nvidia-glx-config enable

now go through a set-up...pick the right driver nvidia obviously, the rest i dk I guessed on a bunch of them but you can always try it a few times if you get it wrong.

Code:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

Next on the list is wireless and MAYBE screwing the bottom back on tv. On a somewhat random note, when I first cracked open my tv several months ago-only to give up on the XBMC dream for a while and now come back to it-I accidentally ripped the rubber footpad. Does anyone know of a place I could buy a new one? I am contemplating just checking out the Apple Store as I will be down in that area tomorrow hope maybe they have a way to get one if I am willing to pay...
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#56
Great, that's good into. I'll poke around to try and see why the default video failed on first boot since one can ssh in. If not, there should be a way to pre-setup the correct nvidia driver for X11 and I'll add that to the wiki.

I did find another issue, the installed 100.14.19 nvidia driver does not change the gpu clock so underclocking is not working. This means that eventually xvmc decode will eventually hang/video corruption. Going to either 100.14.23 or the 169 series and using "Envy" to update should fix it. If you have to update the nvidia driver, might as well move to the 169 version.

Sorry no source for the rubber footpad. I don't think the Apple store will be able to help. All AppleTV go back to the "factory" for service and I've never see any parts list (I'm a Select Apple Developer). Maybe a trashed one on ebay?

If you go to the Apple Store check out the iPod Touch, very nice.
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#57
Wireless is working...sort of. Installed the dell driver using ndiswrapper, only getting 2.4 (b/g/crap n) GHz networks though which is disappointing. I have the N airport base station which I am running a 5Ghz a/n network off of. A must for living in an apartment were the sheer number of wireless networks makes stable b/g connections pretty much an exercise in futility.

Has anyone heard of getting the 5Ghz a/n functionality of the tv hardware working? Or is my best bet an 802.11a game adapter?

Andrew
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#58
The AppleTV uses the same wi-fi hardware as the MacMini and MacBook so I'd google for what other have done using these under linux.
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#59
davilla Wrote:The AppleTV uses the same wi-fi hardware as the MacMini and MacBook so I'd google for what other have done using these under linux.

Not the same as the MacBook..tv is Broadcom(sp?) and MacBook is Atheros. Atheros you can get 5ghz a and you can see 5ghz n (though connections do not work) using the MadWifi driver. All the non-ndiswrapper info I have found thus far on the chipset in the tv seems to suggest ndiswrapper is the only way to go for now...just wanted to see if anyone else had seen differently.

In other news after an exhausting (2AM here) compile that felt like it took at least an hour, I have XBMC on the tv Smile

Thanks for your help davilla direct, through past posts (I swear at this point if you have a Linux on tv question the most efficient way to get an answer is googling davilla and your question), and obviously for the atv-bootloader...not having to embark down the kernel patching path to get this working sure makes it an easier and far less daunting path.

One final question before I try and get some sleep. Should I be enabling analog audio using the patch linked here or is there a newer solution to this issue?

Andrew
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#60
That's the description, the link there is broke so here's another one,

http://forum.awkwardtv.org/download/file.php?id=44

It's a pretty easy patch, check with --dry-run first though.

So you did the compile for XBMC not the deb install? How's it working?
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