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2013-06-26, 21:41
(This post was last modified: 2013-06-26, 21:42 by ilovemymac.)
I have heard that you can boot the atv1 from a USB stick that has Linux installed and Xbmc with all the add ons on it. And this can be done without messing with the original os on the atv1 hard drive.
How do I do this? I only see the ability to install Linux on the hard drive from the USB stick.
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Both OpenELEC.tv and Crystalbuntu.com should have tools to prep a USB stick that directly runs XBMC. One of my ATV1s run Crystalbuntu off of a USB stick, using the instructions from the site, and it's fairly easy.
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I am doing this for a realtive i have an ATV 2. Can i choose which add ons are installed? or is that something that happens when they do the initial boot up?
Is there any reason to leave the OS X on the hard drive? It says it gives better support when installed to the HD.
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Yeah, you just install add-ons after it's all set up.
Some people like keeping the original ATV OS on the hard drive so they can watch iTunes movies that have DRM protection, but other than that, not much reason to avoid an HDD installation.
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So I can't do it all from here and just mail them the stick all installed with Xbmc and all the add ons?
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Ok it just sounded like you couldn't do it on one atv and then transfer to another.
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You can if you install Openelec to the USB stick. Userdata will be on the stick and the ATV hard drive is untouched.
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Can you do it with crystalumbuntu? Since I don't have a Linux computer I thought you couldn't do it.
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I don't have experience with crystalbuntu on ATV but you can just run Ubuntu on your Mac from an Ubuntu Live cd and install Openelec to your USB stick from Ubuntu. (If the Mac installation fails you like it did me)
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If the mac can read the file system of the USB drive after it has been formatted and such, then you could just copy all the add-ons and such over to it. I think you can do ext2/3 on Mac OS X via FUSE. It always seems touchy when I've tried to get ext2/3 to work on Mac OS X, but it's been a long time since I last tried.
What add-ons were you looking to install? I could probably throw something together for you, make sure it works on an ATV1, and then give you a link to an img file that you could then use to make the USB drive on Mac OS X. Making the drive on Mac OS X for OpenELEC and Crystalbuntu is very easy when using an img file.
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What difference is there in using openelc vs crystal?
