Create and format proper AppleTV partitions

April 27, 2008 - ATV-Bootloader has been updated

This guide details how to properly create and format the required GPT partitions on the internal PATA disk using a USB flash drive with atv-bootloader installed. The internal PATA disk is typically "/dev/sdaX" and you can target an external USB disk by change the device "/dev/sdcX", "/dev/sddX", etc). Remember that these instructions are a guide not a script to cut and paste. They will need to be altered (drive identifiers, sector counts, etc) to suite your particular setup.

WARNING If you are installing to the original AppleTV internal drive, you should backup the original hard drive.

Details

You don't actually need to create the "EFI" and "OSBoot" partitions, the AppleTV will boot fine without them. I always include them on the internal disk just in case the Apple EFI firmware tries any tricks on me in the future.

# 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

# mine reports "Disk /dev/sda: 20.0GB" so that is our ending point

# 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 18.9GB

#create the linux swap partition
parted -s /dev/sda mkpart primary linux-swap 18.9GB 20.0GB

# sync the system partition tables
partprobe /dev/sda

# verify the partitions
parted -s /dev/sda print

# you should see something similar (note boot and atvrecv flags)
Model: IC25N020 ATDA04-0 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 20.0GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt

Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name     Flags  
 1      20.5kB  25.0MB  25.0MB               primary  boot   
 2      25.0MB  50.0MB  25.0MB               primary  atvrecv
 3      50.0MB  75.0MB  25.0MB               primary         
 4      75.0MB  18.9GB  18.8GB               primary         
 5      18.9GB  20.0GB  1104MB               primary         

# 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

install atv-bootloader

# download recovery files
wget http://atv-bootloader.googlecode.com/files/recovery-0.6.tar.gz
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

Done, now proceed to install your linux distro

remember to install to /dev/sda4 with swap at /dev/sda5

Comment by dbpodiluk, May 04, 2008

couple of things i would like to add.

1. in the install atv-bootloader section: a. after you create the mount points you will need to mount things there: mount /dev/sda2 recovery/ mount /dev/sda3 osboot/

2. looks like dns lookup does not work so the wget does not work. what i did was create a mount called tmp/ and 'mount /dev/sdb1 tmp/' the location of the recovery partition on my boot usb. then cp the contents over to the other mounted partitions.

Comment by sdavilla, May 04, 2008

1) fixed in wiki, thanks for reporting this

2) something wrong with dns lookup. "ping www.google.com" also fails. "/etc/resolv.conf" looks correct.

Comment by christie.tim, May 07, 2008

Definitely something wrong with the DNS. I got around it by hosting it on my own site and getting it with wget using the IP address.

Comment by sdavilla, May 07, 2008

DNS fails because of two missing libs in the initramfs, this will be fixed in a future release. If you really need DNS then post request in the discussion group.

Comment by marcelor0113, Jun 26, 2008

The step that calls for the atvrecv flag in /dev/sda2 ( parted -s /dev/sda set 2 atvrecv on ) does no work for me. When I print I don't get the flag, only the "boot" flag on the 2nd partition.

Comment by marcelor0113, Jun 26, 2008

Meant to say "boot" flag on the first partition on my comment above, not second.

Comment by sdavilla, Jun 26, 2008

If you did the "parted -s /dev/sda set 2 atvrecv on" step but do not see the atvrecv when you print the partitions, check that you are running the patched parted. Atv-bootloader contains the correct version, if you are running a LiveCD then see http://code.google.com/p/atv-bootloader/wiki/InstallParted to build the correct version.

Comment by smeedy, Aug 09, 2008

Just to be safe so ppl don't screw up local discs. I would mention a /dev/sdx and not the /dev/sda in the howto.

Comment by karl.wagner, Oct 11, 2009

Would it be possible to boot Haiku on the ATV (USB Image) ?

Comment by sdavilla, Oct 11, 2009

I think it would take some work to boot Haiku on the ATV.