Hi all, I managed to install debian lenny on my appletv device.
My plan was to use a CompactFlash <-> 2.5 parallel ata adapter, and install and boot linux on the compact flash. I plan to use the appletv as a small server, and I'd prefer avoiding running a 2.5in hard disk continuously (in the past I used old laptops as servers, and the hard drives would fail fairly quickly, even when I tried to limit the amount of writes by disabling logging etc...). I tried with 2 Sandisk compact flash, 4 and 8 gb, but in both cases I was unable to boot from the CompactFlash, the appleTV would just display an icon with a disk and a question mark, as if it could not find the device. Booting from USB I can access the compact flash fine, so eventually I got a USB stick that starts debian (installed on the compact flash) using the boot_linux.sh mechanism, but I'd like to hear if anyone managed to boot from a Compact Flash. I'm thinking it might be related to the capacity, though before I buy a bigger compact flash card I'd like to know if that's really the issue. Just in case I'm appending to this post the CompactFlash settings, as seen by Linux (I wanted to be sure that ultradma was enabled). One question though, I got the yellow led blinking all the time, is there any way to disable it ? Is this due to the fact that the appleTV was started in recovery mode through an USB device ? Thanks for your help, Laurent PS: I might post a short walkthrough of my debian lenny installation if anyone is interested. Here are the settings of the compact flash atv-debian:/proc/ide/ide0/hda# cat settings name value min max mode ---- ----- --- --- ---- acoustic 0 0 254 rw address 0 0 2 rw bios_cyl 7964 0 65535 rw bios_head 16 0 255 rw bios_sect 63 0 63 rw current_speed 34 0 70 rw failures 0 0 65535 rw init_speed 10 0 70 rw io_32bit 0 0 3 rw keepsettings 0 0 1 rw lun 0 0 7 rw max_failures 1 0 65535 rw multcount 0 0 4 rw nice1 1 0 1 rw nowerr 0 0 1 rw number 0 0 3 rw pio_mode write-only 0 255 w unmaskirq 0 0 1 rw using_dma 1 0 1 rw wcache 0 0 1 rw atv-debian:/proc/ide/ide0/hda# --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/atv-bootloader?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
