[ATV1] HOW-TO install Sam's image to internal Apple TV harddrive

Sam.Nazarko Wrote:Use the distro in installer.img.gz if your installing to HDD, i.e. run the script and use that.

That was the first thing I tried. It wouldn't boot either. I DDed it to a usb drive, plugged it into aTV, and it failed to boot.

Sam.Nazarko Wrote:Fire up Ubuntu or Debian, run them commands on the desktop with your USB plugged in et voila.

Are you suggesting that this will create a bootable USB hard drive which can be used to boot an ATV by plugging that drive into the ATV's USB port, even if you keep your original ATV internal drive?

Philip

fanofanne Wrote:Any time soon ? Have a cleaned up atv1 waiting for an install. Trying to decide which route to take. I don't need HDMI audio.

BTW. Thanks for all the excellent work that you have put in. I have been reading and learning for the past week.

Give Ubuntu a go, you can always change distro if you want. I expect Arch will take me a while to do as I have to fit it around my schedule.

Romey-Rome Wrote:That was the first thing I tried. It wouldn't boot either. I DDed it to a usb drive, plugged it into aTV, and it failed to boot.

Of course it failed. That image has been hex-edited to allow file-system injection via Windows/Linux -- run the script or edit /.distrochoice in partition #3 manually

pmcd Wrote:Are you suggesting that this will create a bootable USB hard drive which can be used to boot an ATV by plugging that drive into the ATV's USB port, even if you keep your original ATV internal drive?

Philip

You can either overwrite your HDD (internal) or use a USB, script lets you do either.

Hope these answers clear the air

Sam.Nazarko Wrote:You can either overwrite your HDD (internal) or use a USB, script lets you do either.

Hope these answers clear the air

Just to be clear here. By USB this can be either a flash or a hard drive? If it is a hard drive then does one run the usb script for installing ( with the hard drive attached to a Linux computer) or the HD script? Once you then boot the ATV from that hard drive then it won't go about erasing the internal hard drive one hopes!?

philip

Edit: Sorry about the confusion. I read the script and it automates it all. Pretty neat. The script, from Ubuntu, will write either the usb image or the other one to an attached usb device. So it can be a usb device (flash or hard drive) headed for an external enclosure to boot the ATV (this would write usb.img) or a hard drive slated to replaced the internal drive ( and then it writes out installer.img).

Will try this now!

Edit2: Very slick. One suggestion. It might be nice to have the option of selecting the image instead of having to download it automatically. This might be useful if one had already downloaded the image. Of course it makes things a bit more complicated, but the process seems to be pretty simple as is. I ran it from Fusion with Ubuntu 9 and it just seemed to know which drive to deal with.

Ok, the installer did its thing. It partitioned everything but left unallocated space of 300 gigs or so. I had installed it to a 320gig drive. The unallocated piece is at the end of the partition, so can I just go ahead and initialize that as fat or ext2 or whatever ?

As it is, the hard drive booted the ATV from USB ( while the internal hard drive was left untouched). Much faster than a flash drive, but there is still that unused 300 gig partition.

Is there something that can be done to the unallocated partition or is it supposed to be that way? Seems a waste. Is there a simple way to install the fixed parted on a Ubuntu system? It's all very confusing at this point!

Basically the installer does not resize the 3rd partition. I tried it on a 16gig flash drive and the same thing happened. It seems to think there is nothing to do. That is, it thinks the disk is already at its limit even though before running the resize command it recognizes it isn't. It's the same old story as with the parted problem. Sigh ...

philip

Well my usb install is now failing with "/dev/sdb3 does not exist. Dropping to shell!" at boot.

pmcd Wrote:Is there something that can be done to the unallocated partition or is it supposed to be that way? Seems a waste. Is there a simple way to install the fixed parted on a Ubuntu system? It's all very confusing at this point!
philip

I am wondering this too. I ran the installer and it works great. There is a definite advantage to booting off usb hard drive instead of flash (I have been running Sam's previous builds off a hard drive for months, very stable and speedy).

I was hoping this installer would help me deal with the extra space on my 40 GB external drive as well, but like Philip, I have a drive that has been autoformatted to about 4GB (instead of the 40GB available).

I run Ubuntu from a "live" cd and I am not sure how to install the patched parted, or what to do after that.

Any nudge in the right direction would be welcome.

Thanks again.

Craig

Hello,

I'm trying to install the latest image with the installer from a 4gig USB stick. During the boot sequence it crashes at some point when It's not finding a file on svn.stmlabs.com.

The script stops at the initialise.sh file and drops me to the appletv-ubuntu prompt.

When I try to ssh the box. atv/atv and xbmc/xbmc don't seem to work.

Am I missing something?

Thanks in advance.

Let's clear some things up.

pmcd Wrote:Edit2: Very slick. One suggestion. It might be nice to have the option of selecting the image instead of having to download it automatically. This might be useful if one had already downloaded the image. Of course it makes things a bit more complicated, but the process seems to be pretty simple as is. I ran it from Fusion with Ubuntu 9 and it just seemed to know which drive to deal with.

No one will have 'already downloaded it'. I am providing support through the UI, expert users will have to fend for themselves.

pmcd Wrote:Ok, the installer did its thing. It partitioned everything but left unallocated space of 300 gigs or so. I had installed it to a 320gig drive. The unallocated piece is at the end of the partition, so can I just go ahead and initialize that as fat or ext2 or whatever ?

As it is, the hard drive booted the ATV from USB ( while the internal hard drive was left untouched). Much faster than a flash drive, but there is still that unused 300 gig partition.

Is there something that can be done to the unallocated partition or is it supposed to be that way? Seems a waste. Is there a simple way to install the fixed parted on a Ubuntu system? It's all very confusing at this point!

Basically the installer does not resize the 3rd partition. I tried it on a 16gig flash drive and the same thing happened. It seems to think there is nothing to do. That is, it thinks the disk is already at its limit even though before running the resize command it recognizes it isn't. It's the same old story as with the parted problem. Sigh ...

philip

You seem confused. The installer script will utilise the maximum size of the drive minus 1.5GB for sector segmentation. "The hard drive booted the ATV from USB". Please clarify, did you install Ubuntu onto your internal drive with the USB using the Hard Drive Install option

Romey-Rome Wrote:Well my usb install is now failing with "/dev/sdb3 does not exist. Dropping to shell!" at boot.

Please be specific to your installation (type, method, USB drive etc)

bigjuggler Wrote:I am wondering this too. I ran the installer and it works great. There is a definite advantage to booting off usb hard drive instead of flash (I have been running Sam's previous builds off a hard drive for months, very stable and speedy).

I was hoping this installer would help me deal with the extra space on my 40 GB external drive as well, but like Philip, I have a drive that has been autoformatted to about 4GB (instead of the 40GB available).

I run Ubuntu from a "live" cd and I am not sure how to install the patched parted, or what to do after that.

Any nudge in the right direction would be welcome.

Thanks again.

Craig

No need for a livecd with patched parted. The script will DD the image and your aTV will handle the rest. Full space is used by the install

jumpcuts Wrote:Hello,

I'm trying to install the latest image with the installer from a 4gig USB stick. During the boot sequence it crashes at some point when It's not finding a file on svn.stmlabs.com.

The script stops at the initialise.sh file and drops me to the appletv-ubuntu prompt.

When I try to ssh the box. atv/atv and xbmc/xbmc don't seem to work.

Am I missing something?

Thanks in advance.

Network connectivity is required for the initialisation of the system, I assume you have connected an Ethernet cable if attempting a SSH connection. You should check network connectivity and treat this as a Ubuntu issue rather than an aTV one: system responding to ping? cat /etc/network/interfaces returns "eth0 auto"?

The resizing of internal drive at SDA3 works for me

http://img840.imageshack.us/i/img0009fv.jpg/