PartitioningLinux

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