AtvCloner 0.1.8 is now XBMC Linux capable!
So as I alluded to in an earlier post I set out to try to enhance the use of the original AppleTV 1 since it has been replaced by the AppleTV 2 which is a fine unit but I am a big fan of having local storage available on the device … and this rules out the AppleTV2.
Now, adding a Broadcom Crystal HD card in place of the stock Wireless card (yes, you lose wireless) and installing a Linux partition that boots right up into XBMC turned out to be just the ticket! Given the rather lengthy process it requires to do this from the terminal manually I got to thinking why not just modify AtvCloner to do a special partition scheme using a premade XBMC / Linux image. Well it works, and has been pretty thoroughly tested.
You will need three things:
1. The new AtvCloner 0.1.8
2. A modified recovery.dmg
3. The XBMC / Linux image
Now the biggest issue is the size of the Linux image, its a full linux install modified for use on the AppleTV 1 including support for the Crystal HD card and boots directly into XBMC. However as such it is 3.64 GB which would kill my web server. Given the size I decided to use Bittorrent for both the XBMC / Linux image and the modified recovery.dmg. If you are not familiar with bit torrent you will need a bit torrent client. For the mac I strongly recommend Transmission its free and works great on a mac.
Edit: It is appreciated if you can continue to seed for a while after downloading the images. That way everyone can get it faster. Its normal etiquette for torrents to seed afterwards as much as you downloaded. If you can’t for some reason thats fine, but it would be appreciated!
Here is what you need to download:
After you get all three files go ahead and expand them (they are all zipped), you will use AtvCloner as before but instead of just using your backed up stock AppleTV OS files you will use the modified recovery.dmg for recovery and also add in the XBMC / Linux image for the linux parition that said use your stock backed up efi.dmg . Make sure to check the “ATV Linux XBMC w/ CHD Support” checkbox before preparing your new drive.
NOTE: the XBMC Linux partitioning does not use your boot.dmg as it is “single boot” this avoids having to manually perform a recovery boot via the atv remote as well saves about 900 mb of your hard drive space for the Media partition for local storage.
Also, this image will offer up a remote share on your mac once the atv boots called atv-xbmc. To mount it on your mac (and then be able to transfer media over to it) use login: atv , password: xbmc.
To ssh into the AppleTV its the same user name and password:
ssh atv@your.atvs.ipaddress
when asked for the password use ‘xbmc’.
am i right that one needs the bcm970015 or will this work with the earlier …12 as well?
No, it will work with either. though the 970015 has some advantages from a decoding standpoint. The driver is the same.
Great, sorry for asking, I did not realise they used the same driver! Must do my homework better… I will give this a go next week as sounds excellent
Hey dynaflash thank for this, however I have a bit of a problem after turning on the ATV it asks me to restart or restore, is this normal as your guide seems to say no restore is needed ?
* I did a backup first of my drive
* I used the files from the backup in ATVcloner (wouldn’t let me continue unless I added the boot.dmg first then ticked the Linux XBMC option which grayed that out)
* I used the 20GB image you supplied along with the custom recovery
If I do a restore will that get XBMC linux going or will it put me back at square one.
Well I tried the restore option but it failed so I’m guessing something went wrong with the image generation.
Two other questions dynaflash
1) Does your image mount USB hard drives automatically so you can browse them in XBMC ?
2) Is there any chance of a linux version of ATVcloner as I’m having to borrow a friends Mac to do this, at least then anyone could fire up linux on any computer and do the procedure.
Doesn’t look like we have anyone seeding. dynaflash any chance you could seed?
Thanks in advance!
Hmm, first yes there is a bug where you have to choose a boot.img in order to start even though it does not get used in the actual cloning.
And no, it should not ask you to do a restore as it should recover boot automatically into the linux partition. Let me verify I have the correct recovery image up there. A log from atvcloner would be helpful (as always) and is just copied and pasted into a pastebin site from the activity window in atvcloner and linked here. That would tell me what exactly happened.
1. No, but its on my list and should be easy enough to do. Once you get the setup working if your at all fluent in linux you could mod from ssh.
2.Sadly the only chance of a linux version of atvcloner is if someone fluent in writing linux gui apps decides to do one. I have no clue where to even start.
Hmm, unless I had a service provider issue while I was away the last few days I should be seeding.
Contact other than comments:
Anyone interested in more timely support (I obviously am not the best with checking on comments every day) some of us are on irc working on this at #atvlinux on freenode.net. I am there 24/7 (or at least idling).
I googled Linux wifi setup and got this far…
atv@atv-xbmc:~/atvclient$ sudo apt-get install wireless-tools
[sudo] password for atv:
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
wireless-tools is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 17 not upgraded.
atv@atv-xbmc:~/atvclient$ lspci | grep Network
02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4328 802.11a/b/g/n (rev 05)
atv@atv-xbmc:~/atvclient$ iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.
eth0 no wireless extensions.
atv@atv-xbmc:~/atvclient$ sudo ifconfig wlan0 up
wlan0: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
and this is where my linux knowledge runs out.
@viewtop1
Glad it worked out for you!
No wifi is not supported on this though its possible to install it on linux, dunno how well it works as haven’t done it yet. The main goal is to use it with the CrystalHD card with replaces the wireless card so I have not had a need to do so.
Enabling wireless along with enabling the appletv’s usb port for local storage are both on my to do list, but first I am working on a new image that uses Linux Lucid LTS 10.04 as opposed to the current images Hardy 8.04 On main reason I am switching to a newer rev of linux is that xbmc is dropping support for Hardy as of xbmc 10.01, which is kind tough since the hardy install had really been refined for the atv 1.
So in its current incarnation as the image is shipped yes, as it says in the post you have to use ethernet right out of the box. As far as helping you install wireless on the xbmc linux hardy rev you are using I am afraid I am not much help as again I have never done it *yet*. Sorry.
How is everything working out? One question I have is did a share automatically get offered to your mac ? And if so have you tried to mount it with login: atv password: xbmc ?
It came to my attention after I shipped this image that you might need to ssh into the appletv and chmod the media partition to be able to write to it. If you find thats the case ….
ssh into the atv like so in terminal on your mac:
ssh atv@appletv_ipaddress
(Note: appletv_ipaddress is the actual ip address of the appletv, if your not sure in xbmc go down to settings on the main screen, it will show the ip address to the right along with some other basic info.)
you will be asked for your password: xbmc
Run this command once logged in:
sudo chmod -R a+rwx /media/Media
thats it, you can now logout or whatever, from now on you can drag files right to that share on your mac and access them on the atv.
Hi There
Thanks for the reply. Will be waiting for the updates…
No.. the ATV did not offer me share. I cannot see the ATV on my network, Though I can see the public folder on my mac and watch files i have moved there.
I will try the ssh routine and see if it will work.
Cheers
Okay, well the ssh routine is to make it writeable via your mac.
If you have the finder window on your mac set to show connected servers (and providing you have smb sharing turned on on your mac) it would just show up in the left sidebar on your mac.
Alternately you can use your mac’s Go > Network menu to see the connected atv.
Note: you may want to reboot your appletv after using the chmod line via:
sudo rebootOne other thing … since xbmc has dropped ppa support for linux hardy (our install and the best for the atv1) I am currently working on compiling custom future xbmc revs for our install. After that I hope to post much more as far as documentation on this image. Thanks for your patience!
Greetings
I also did not get offered a share, but after the SSH routing and sudo reboot, I can see the folder in my network menu. However, it does not seem to be writable. Any suggestions?
And when you were logged in via ssh …. did you run:
sudo chmod -R a+rwx /media/Media?
@dynaflash
Yes, I should have said “SSH routine”, but I did run the sudo chmod command, and rebooted.
@silverislet
On thing to note, unless you connect as a registered user to the atv share on your mac …. I think guest is read only, so connect in finder and when it asks you for login use:
atv
xbmc
that should give you rw permissions to the Media partition.
That did the trick – thanks much for the advice, and for all of your efforts!