[_C4_]

@fistacorpse

Hey, I guess you found my blog. I apologize, I started a windows tutorial as well but never finished/posted it.

I would stick creating it using atv-win and creating the partitions. The problem with the image is that the boot partition needs to be at a certain place on disk. (I think its 40 bytes in but don't quote me) I fear that the usb image tool (have never used it) does not take into account partition placement when creating an image. This is very important when dealing with the atv.

If you created an image using dd then you would get the correct partition size and placement, except if you dd a 4gb drive you would have a 4gb image file which is kinda big.

I will look into digging up the pics and write-up I have on the windows side and see If I can post something. Maybe I'll try to create an image and see how that works.

- C4

[Tcalp]

@fistacorpse

Hey, I guess you found my blog. I apologize, I started a windows tutorial as well but never finished/posted it.

I would stick creating it using atv-win and creating the partitions. The problem with the image is that the boot partition needs to be at a certain place on disk. (I think its 40 bytes in but don't quote me) I fear that the usb image tool (have never used it) does not take into account partition placement when creating an image. This is very important when dealing with the atv.

If you created an image using dd then you would get the correct partition size and placement, except if you dd a 4gb drive you would have a 4gb image file which is kinda big.

I will look into digging up the pics and write-up I have on the windows side and see If I can post something. Maybe I'll try to create an image and see how that works.

- C4

Most other aTV builds are using dd/usbit to create/restore images ~~ it should create an exact replica drive to drive. Yes, you would end up with a '4gb' image file, however once compressed it will be *a lot* smaller as the unused space is just repeating 0's.

[schneidz]

@fistacorpse

Hey, I guess you found my blog. I apologize, I started a windows tutorial as well but never finished/posted it.

I would stick creating it using atv-win and creating the partitions. The problem with the image is that the boot partition needs to be at a certain place on disk. (I think its 40 bytes in but don't quote me) I fear that the usb image tool (have never used it) does not take into account partition placement when creating an image. This is very important when dealing with the atv.

If you created an image using dd then you would get the correct partition size and placement, except if you dd a 4gb drive you would have a 4gb image file which is kinda big.

I will look into digging up the pics and write-up I have on the windows side and see If I can post something. Maybe I'll try to create an image and see how that works.

- C4

one can dd the first 100 or so mb and then use gparted to shrink/ grow the partition. did it once with my fedora-live usb and it worked.

fyi:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/...ost3848442

[fistacorpse]

@fistacorpse

Hey, I guess you found my blog. I apologize, I started a windows tutorial as well but never finished/posted it.

I would stick creating it using atv-win and creating the partitions. The problem with the image is that the boot partition needs to be at a certain place on disk. (I think its 40 bytes in but don't quote me) I fear that the usb image tool (have never used it) does not take into account partition placement when creating an image. This is very important when dealing with the atv.

If you created an image using dd then you would get the correct partition size and placement, except if you dd a 4gb drive you would have a 4gb image file which is kinda big.

I will look into digging up the pics and write-up I have on the windows side and see If I can post something. Maybe I'll try to create an image and see how that works.

- C4

Well, I have got it to the point of booting and running your modified patchstick.sh file.

The issue I have at the moment, I am pretty sure is a permission issue, which I get during the first kexec command, which fails with an error with the /boot/KERNEL stream.

I will play around with it a bit today to see if I can get it running.

Anyway, this is what I did to get it running to this point:

I started with in Windows using the atv-win patchstick creator, which creates a bootable .IMG file, which I then restored on to a USB stick.
To modify the partitions and files, I needed Linux, so I booted up into Ubuntu using a LiveCD.

The patchstick image creates a bootable ATV image with two partitions, the first of which contains the ATV booting information and com.apple.Boot.plist which is already configured to execute patchstick.sh on the second partition.

My idea was to recreate the second partition (which currently will contain patchstick.sh and the payload stuff for installing the original patchstick apps like Launcher, XBMC, SSH etc to the OSX OS) to 128MB FAT32, and put your patchstick.sh, SYSTEM and KERNEL files.

After this, I created a 2GB ext3 partition (/dev/sdb3) and the remaining space (around a GB) for a swap-drive. I don't know if OpenELEC will utilize a swap drive, so if anyone knows if this is or isn't needed, please let me know

This is based on this line in your (_C4_'s) patchstick.sh:

kexec -l /boot/KERNEL --command-line="boot=/dev/sdb2 disk=/dev/sdb3 quiet"

Now, as I said earlier, this booted, and started executing patchstick.sh, but failed with /boot/KERNEL - would it work by using

"kexec -l /dev/sdb2/KERNEL ..." instead?

Since you have it up and running, this setup should work, and I am guessing it might be a permissions issue. I chmod'd everything to 777 and +x for patchstick.sh but I'm going to play around with some other stuff and see how it goes. So yeah, if you have any help or ideas, would love to hear it

[fistacorpse]

Okay guys, got it up and running and testing it out with some 720p and 1080i/p content, and it's working nicely

After getting it booting, the whole system is running very smoothly, and this is from booting from a USB stick.

I setup the partitions so that a full image will be under 4GB.

The partition setup is:
1: 25MB hfs+ partition, contains the AppleTV boot information
2: 220MB fat32 partition, contains the boot script and "payload" data
3: 2GB ext3 partition, for OpenELEC system data
4: 1GB linux swap partition

Partition 1 and 2 are unchanged from the partitions created by restoring a stock-standard patchstick .IMG created by atv-win (using Windows 7.)

For partition 2, I modified the patchstick.sh boot script to the one provided by C4 and copied the SYSTEM and KERNEL files from the OpenELEC ATV public beta release, and deleted the rest of the "payload" data from the patchstick image (all done using Ubuntu.)

After this, it was a matter of plug in and boot.

So, I guess the next question is, do you guys want a backup of the USB stick? Considering that it is 3GB of empty partitions and under 100MB or real data, I would hope it would compress down nicely.

Anyway, I'm going to play around with it a bit more. Hoorah!

Also _C4_, I don't know how this differs from your approach for getting it up and running on Windows (since I used Ubuntu for all of the partition modifications), I'd still be interested to see how you did it.

[fistacorpse]

Okay, further information:

Code:

Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb2               220981     79540    141441  36% /flash
/dev/sdb3              2014800     50912   1861540   3% /storage
/dev/loop0               76288     76288         0 100% /
none                    122752       340    122412   0% /dev
none                    124884         0    124884   0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1               201633         1    201633   0% /var/media/EFI
/dev/sda2                25500     10096     15404  40% /var/media/Recovery
/dev/sda3            153747604   7795416 138209228   5% /var/media/c50fbc74-3297-456b-bbc4-68f2a85c3f43
/dev/sdb1                25500      8488     17012  33% /var/media/Recovery_

This is the USB stick while OpenELEC and XBMC are running (SSH u/p is root/openelec). XBMC is installed to /storage/.xbmc/ which is the 2GB ext3 partition. The Recovery partition (the 25MB hfs+ ATV boot partition) is only needed while the system is booting - might see if I can get it to unmount when OpenELEC starts up, because they all show up as local drives in XBMC when you're looking through your sources list for videos, music etc.

Anyway, this means that XBMC has the most storage available to it which is good for thumbnails, video/music DBs etc.

The process for installing this to the internal HDD would be the same as any other USB -> HDD guide for the various other linux distros.

Well, let me know if you have any questions. I will make a clean image of this setup, which will be in .IMG format, to be used with the USB Image Tool. Will compress it and post back with the file size, if anyone wants it (and has a place to host it)

[nikzgfx]

Been a longtime xbmcfreak user, whilst I was happy with their live images most of the functions I never used! Just switched to this openelec build and wow it's fast! Runs perfectly on the revo, had an issue with the sound but sorted that out by enabling the revo config, also had an issue with the frame buffer but sorted that out as well. Well done mate this is simply the best build out there!

[RuudBurger]

My OpenELEC install won't suspend properly. It suspends, but resumes immediately after.
I had the same problem on XBMCLive and fixed it by disabled some wakeup device, but I can't seem to find how to do this on OpenELEC.

cat /proc/acpi/wakeup
Device S-state Status Sysfs node
P0P1 S4 *enabled pci:0000:00:1e.0
P0P4 S4 *disabled pci:0000:00:1c.0
P0P5 S4 *disabled pci:0000:00:1c.1
P0P6 S4 *disabled pci:0000:00:1c.2
P0P7 S4 *disabled
P0P8 S4 *disabled
P0P9 S4 *disabled
USB0 S3 *enabled pci:0000:00:1d.0
USB1 S3 *enabled pci:0000:00:1d.1
USB2 S3 *enabled pci:0000:00:1d.2
USB3 S3 *enabled pci:0000:00:1d.3
EUSB S3 *enabled

Only 1 of the USB poort need to be enabled for wakeup, but how to disable the rest? The P0P1 also needs to be disabled, assuming this is my LAN.

[EarnheadJ]

I have a windows machine in the living room with onboard nvidia 9400 gpu and intel core 2 duo E8400 that I am trying to install latest Openelec on usb stick so that I can just pull the stick out if I want to boot to windows instead of xbmc. Anyway I had used one of the former developmental buiilds before and it worked great. ( Actually I think it was one for the ion platform but I am not real sure). This stick has since been reformatted so I am trying to install the latest beta. I was finally able to make the install stick with a little help from this forum, but when I install to another usb stick it seems to go along smoothly, until it gets to 75%, where it finishes rather quickly. It ends up at the first screen where I reboot and then it sticks on "verifying DMI pool data" and never starts xbmc. Any ideas? I have tried the generic and ion builds. Same result. Jim

Is it because it is picky about certain usb sticks? Brands? sizes? I have tried 4gb and 8 gb. It just will not boot after installation. Like I said it seems to be installing until it gets to 75% mark and then quickly it goes back to initial install screen. This is driving me nuts. I want to be able to use this. Please help

Edit: Just tried same install stick and same 2nd usb stick on different computer (Revo 3610). It works and boots quickly to xbmc. Really confused now. Researching a little on the stuck on "verifying DMI pool data". I guess it has something to do with the bios on the other computer? Odd thing is I know it worked before on an older version of OpenElec. Any ideas? Jim

[schneidz]

^ thx, i assume it is in the tar-ball ?

^ so basically you need two hard drives... is there a way to skip a step and use one usb hd (or do i need to buy another) ?

hi, i just tried to create an install-usb

Code:

sudo ./create_installstick /dev/sdb

using the ion-x86-64 tarball on an acer revo. but when i try to boot with it, it just gives a blinking underscore on the top left corner. i tried with two different usb-harddrives.

[jaeyjaey]

Same here with Zotac ZBOX HD-ID11 ion-x86-64 tarball (blinking cursor at top-left booting from usb device)...

create_installstick script tested from linux, windows xp and windows 7 64bit.

Tried 4 different USB sticks (512MB, 2GB, 2GB -SDCARD-, 8GB) in combination with SSD and HDD. No chance

[darkscout]

Why are you trying with a 64bit ZBOX OpenELEC.tv distro?

Apple TV is 32 bit.

[schneidz]

^ if you are talking about mine i am using the x86-64 ion tarball but the install-usb doesnt work when trying to boot an acer aspire revo 3610.

is openelec only for apple-tv ? (then why do they have ion x86- 64-bit tarballs) ?

[therionate]

^ if you are talking about mine i am using the x86-64 ion tarball but the install-usb doesnt work when trying to boot an acer aspire revo 3610.

is openelec only for apple-tv ? (then why do they have ion x86- 64-bit tarballs) ?

OpenELEC has a build that is usable on ATV, but also for ION's and ATOM's. Because the last messages where all about the ATV release, I think they misunderstood you.
About your problem, I've seen this before on some topic's and most of them got it working with another USB. As you have tried many, maybe the disklabel is wrong. Make sure it's MSDOS and not GPT (for Mac users), you can change this with Parted/Gparted. Also sometimes it works if you run the create installstick a few times before it works properly.

[nikzgfx]

sraue can you please tell me where the location of the splash screen is? I'm making some custom openelec splash screens and would love to test them out. Thanks.