Build/Install HFS Tools

HFS (hfs) and HFSPlus (hfsplus) are the names of Apple formatted partitions. These are similar to EXT2 and EXT3 in the Linux world, just different flavor. The original AppleTV disk has four GPT partitions, three of which are formatted hfsplus. Two of those are actually hfsplus journaled.

In order to boot atv-bootloader, one needs to be able to create a GPT partition with a "Recovery" GUID and format that partition hfsplus. Linux does not have proper disk tools for formatting hfsplus so one needs to build and install them. These tools actually come from "darwin", the Apple open source project and they have an addition patch in oder to compile and function under a Linux OS.

Note If you are running Ubuntu Hardy then this step is not required. Hardy has hfs tools via apt-get (http://packages.ubuntu.com/hardy/otherosfs/hfsprogs)

sudo apt-get install hfsprogs

Warning If your file path name has spaces "/home/davilla/atv dev/work", then hfs support tools will not build properly. Make sure your file path does not have spaces in it.

build and install hfs support tools

# fetch hfs_support
wget http://atv-bootloader.googlecode.com/files/hfs_support-1.0.tar.gz
tar -xzf hfs_support-1.0.tar.gz

# build and install
cd hfs_support/
sudo ./build_diskdev_cmds.sh

Done.

Comment by sonny.benshimon, Apr 29, 2008

Small "newbie" comment. I tried to run the build_diskdev_cmds.sh script and ran into some compiling problems telling me some files where not found where I could definitely see the files (I commented out the "Clean up" section so that I could see exactly what files were created). Solution: I put all the files under ~/Apple TV/ATVbootloader/hfs_support. The space in "Apple TV" mixed up gcc and it was looking for a file under TV/ATVbootloader/hfs_support which it couldn't find. Changing the directory name to AppleTV using mv ~/Apple\ /TV ~/AppleTV fixed the problem.

Comment by sonny.benshimon, Apr 29, 2008

Scott, making this "GREAT" utility more newbie-proof in light of my previous comment, I suggest to make all the atvbootloader instructions targeted to a predefined path, for instance ~/appletv/atvbootloader

Comment by sdavilla, Apr 29, 2008

Must be a bug in the Makefile script. Typically vars are ref'd $NAME but they should be $(NAME) in case of spaces in the var name.

I'll keep that in mind.

Comment by ricksaiz, May 25, 2008

Info: In the Brazilian linux environment, desktop is show as "Área de Trabalho" and I usually put things on it when working. Same space errors occurred when compiling the Parted-1.8.8