On Sun, Feb 7, 2010 at 4:51 PM, Scott D. Davilla
<<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]> wrote:
I realize this is a bit off topic for this group, but I know Scott
will know the answer. I'd like to remove my internal ATV and boot
from USB. I have no need for 40GB of space since all of my media is
on SMB/AFP share or streamed. This would also cut down on heat and
power consumption. Just wondering if anyone has tried this. I've
actually created all the partitions and copied recovery media just
like this was a new drive onto a 4GB USB drive but haven't removed
the internal drive yet to know if it will work. I realize that I'll
likely have to off-line patchstick the bootable USB, but that
shouldn't be an issue.
It works :) I seem to remember that the AppleTV efi firmware takes a
peek for the internal disk even if booting off a USB drive. Boot
might be a little longer, can't remember now. You just have to try
it, it will boot though with the internal disk removed.
OK, I finally got around to trying this.. :) Setup the drive,
setup files on the recovery partition, opened the Apple TV, removed
the IDE drive and attempted a boot off USB. The activity light on
the USB device flashed for a short period (maybe 4 seconds), then it
was off, then about 30 seconds later it flashed for about 10-15
seconds. Apple logo is on the screen, but nothing else happens. I
let it sit here for about 15 minutes, then it appeared to reboot and
start the same cycle over again. The whole time the front light
on the ATV is blinking yellow. The USB drive is only 4GB (I have
some larger ones coming) and I'll try those later this week. Any
ideas? Thanks in advance!
Below is my USB device setup:
# parted -s /dev/sdc unit s print
Model: Corsair Flash Voyager (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdc: 7929856s
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 40s 69671s 69632s fat32 EFI boot
2 69672s 888871s 819200s hfs+ Recovery atvrecv
3 888872s 2732071s 1843200s hfs+ OSBoot
4 2732072s 7929822s 5197751s hfs+ Media
Everything is empty, with the exception of the Recovery partition
which has the standard files on it:
rw-r--r-- 1 root root 207475830 2008-10-13 19:43 OS.dmg
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-10-05 11:12 .
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 480 2008-09-22 21:41 org_gtp.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 root 80 1024 2007-03-15 00:57 Desktop DB
-rw-r--r-- 1 root 80 2 2007-03-15 00:57 Desktop DF
-rw-r--r-- 1 root 80 520 2007-03-15 00:56 com.apple.Boot.plist
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6306364 2007-03-15 00:44 mach_kernel.prelink
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 298800 2007-02-16 21:43 boot.efi
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 45590 2007-02-16 21:37 BootLogo.png
com.apple.Boot.plist is:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
"<http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd>http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd";>
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Background Color</key>
<integer>0</integer>
<key>Boot Fail Logo</key>
<string></string>
<key>Boot Logo</key>
<string>BootLogo.png</string>
<key>Kernel</key>
<string>mach_kernel</string>
<key>Kernel Cache</key>
<string>mach_kernel.prelink</string>
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>rp=file:///OS.dmg</string>
</dict>
</plist>
Not sure this will work. EFI firmware can boot the kernel but the
kernel does not have USB support until after USB support gets added
once the file system is up via the USB hacks. So you have classic
chicken/egg problem when booting atv(osx) off a USB HD drive.
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