Scott, I did actually create the same layout as for a disk; everything works for an 80gb hard disk, but both sandisk 4gb and 8gb would not boot, so I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. Do you remember the capacity and the brand of the CompactFlash cards you used ?
Thanks for the atvtool tip, will try it ! For reference, here are the commands I typed, after booting from usb and telneting, for an 8gb CF (which is seen as 8196mb), and all these commands succeed: # zero /dev/sda first or pre-existing guid will not change dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=4096 count=1M # create initial gpt structures parted -s /dev/sda mklabel gpt # find max size of disk (see Disk /dev/sda: XXXMB from listing) parted -s /dev/sda print # create a 25MB "EFI" partition (starting at sector 40 is important) parted -s /dev/sda mkpart primary fat32 40s 25M parted -s /dev/sda set 1 boot on # create a 25MB "Recovery" partition parted -s /dev/sda mkpart primary HFS 25M 50M parted -s /dev/sda set 2 atvrecv on # create a 25MB "OSBoot" partition parted -s /dev/sda mkpart primary HFS 50M 75M #create the linux root partition parted -s /dev/sda mkpart primary ext3 75M 7500M #create the linux swap partition parted -s /dev/sda mkpart primary linux-swap 7500M 8196M # sync the system partition tables partprobe /dev/sda # verify the partitions parted -s /dev/sda print # format the partitions # we will let the LiveCD install setup swap mkfs.msdos -F 32 -n EFI /dev/sda1 mkfs.hfsplus -v Recovery /dev/sda2 mkfs.hfsplus -v OSBoot /dev/sda3 mkfs.ext3 -b 4096 -L Linux /dev/sda4 sync # download recovery files tftp -g -r recovery-0.6.tar.gz 192.168.200.33 tar -xzf recovery-0.6.tar.gz # make some mount points mkdir /mnt/osboot /mnt/recovery # mount the partitions fsck.hfsplus /dev/sda2 mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/recovery fsck.hfsplus /dev/sda3 mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/osboot # copy atv-bootloader over cp -arp recovery/* /mnt/osboot/ cp -arp recovery/* /mnt/recovery/ # remember to copy boot.efi, # grab it from the atv-bootloader USB flash disk mkdir tmp mount /dev/sdb1 tmp cp -ap tmp/boot.efi /mnt/osboot cp -ap tmp/boot.efi /mnt/recovery umount /mnt/osboot/ umount /mnt/recovery On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 7:44 PM, Scott D. Davilla <[email protected]> wrote: > > >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 ? > > CompactFlash in place of the 2.5" disk works, I've done it before. > You must use GPT disk format and follow the same "recovery" partition > tricks that the USB flash drive uses. > > Search this list for "atvtool", it's a command-line app that can > control the LED. > > > > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
