I do not have a usb keyboard, so until i can get ahold of one, i decided to try a different approach.


The linux USB Penboot:

I have completed all the "Oops i did not make a backup steps," (which included the extract the boot.efi, dmg2img, have installed parted, and have installed the hfs tool kit...

When building the linux pen boot everything on the list seems to go exactly as the directions say. I have no errors, including when I do the parted -s /dev/sdb unit s print command, the partition appears to be correct with the example given. However, when i enter the sudo cp -ap boot.efi penboot/ command the following is outputted:

user@user-laptop:~$ sudo cp -ap boot.efi penboot/
cp: cannot stat `boot.efi': No such file or directory

I have attempted to re-do the penboot portion , but the error remains

user@user-laptop:~$ sudo cp -ap boot.efi penboot/
cp: cannot stat `boot.efi': No such file or directory

This mean that boot.efi is not located in the same directory that you are running the "sudo cp -ap boot.efi penboot/" command. Do a "ls -l" command. You will not see boot.efi listed.

cp is the linux copy command. The command above means copy the file "boot.efi" into the directory "penboot". boot.efi is the file you are trying to copy. It does not exist where you are doing the copy command. That's what the error says. "boot.efi" no such file or directory. It's pretty basic.

So if you did indeed extract boot.efi. Where did you put it and why are you trying to copy a file that does not exist?

These are pretty basic Linux commands and concepts and if you are having trouble understanding the cp command and it's error, you need to find a friend that understands Linux who can sit down at your computer and walk you through the steps. Copy and pasting commands without understanding what they do is a sure way to trash a system.

Many others have successfully created a recovery-fix USB flash drive without any modification to the creation instructions. The only time it fails is when the USB flash drive will not boot properly. This is not an creation problem, it is a USB flash geometry problem and nothing can fix it. The USB flash was not designed for this task.

You need to get a different USB flash drive and try it the procedure again. That's the breaks, there is no standard for USB flash drives, they have all sorts of different characteristics. Google for "USB flash boot" if you don't believe me.

Hey guys,

I went on vacation after starting this thread, and I'm very surprised to see the activity getting back. Apparently I was not the only on with this problem.

davilla, I wanna say thanks a lot for your effort so far. I have read a lot of your comments on the awkwardtv.org forum, and I really appreciate you taken time to do all this work!

I have got the exact same problems as patrickoq and apparently bdg287. I get the exact same error and output with parted etc.

After reading your posts I suspect that another USB Flash drive is the way to go. However, when I insert the USB Flash drive in my Mac (OSX 10.5), I get a warning saying "Disk Insertion, The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer". I can then choose Initialize, Ignore or Reject.

Would an image called OSBoot mount if the image was created correctly, or isn't the mac supposed to be able to read the image?

For the record if anyone else is troubled, my stick is a "AVIXE USB FLASH DRIVE Media", 1 GB.

Edit: I just had a thought. Will I be able to use an old fashioned card-reader and an SD card to boot from? Have plenty of those in the drawer unlike USB Drives.

Since the recovery-fix.img creates a patchstick with a AppleTV recovery partition, a normal OSX will not be able to mount it and give that error. It's patchstick 101 regarding recovery partitions.

If you have a USB interface, "old fashioned card-reader and an SD card" should work.

Got it to work!

Used the SD card. I was a little worried if it would boot, as it has multiple slots for different cards, but no problem there.

I then encountered the same problem as Richardbr in post #67 where the boot sequence said "unmount: cannot mount /mnt/OSBoot: No such file or directory". I followed his advice and let it hang until the screen when black. I did not reboot however, I had to do that manually. After that, it still had the ATV4windows logo, but I booted it up, and from the ATV menu I chose to restore to factory default. It did some weird colour flickering, but managed to restore to default, so I'm now a happy camper.

Good luck to the rest of you guys not over the line yet, and once again thanks a lot to the helpful comments and insights in here!

bump to keep it in sight, don't want anyone to forget what CiscoTM does to PAYING customers.

I've been trying to make the ideas suggested by Parallex and ellaborated by others in this thread: I have the USB flash drive repartitioned and formatted properly, the files download, copied, and edited as instructed, and I've run the diskutil script. However, when I reboot with the flash stick, it doesn't give me a proper IP address. I know what the address is from my hub and from pinging it. Instead, it presents a hexadecimal number and mentions something about the airport--although I have it hooked up with a Cat5 cable to my hub. This text about IP address is quickly overwritten by text related to launchd and mDNSResponder error messages. There's also some reference to not being able to mount /dev/disk2. If I let it sit for a while, it eventually comes back to a Darwin/BSD console login prompt--I've tried using a USB keyboard to log in from there, but it ignored the keyboard.

The point is that although I know the IP address, the connection is refused when I try to telnet in. Any thoughts as to where I might have a problem? I've try redoing the USB flash drive a few times.

My only guess is that my partitions on the apple tv hard drive are off somehow. I can't run updates, diagnostics (can't get to that menu when booting up), or do a factory restore using the apple menus. This is one of the reasons why I'm trying this flash drive idea. Can I get an opinion on this possibility, in addition to any reasons I might not have considered, please?

Thanks.

Please disregard my previous post: Per an earlier suggestion in this thread, I tried again with a different USB flash drive. It seemed to work with it. I was able to get a clean boot up and was able to telnet in. I ran all the commands listed in entry 22 of this thread by Parallax. Everything went smoothly without complaints from the machine. When I rebooted without the flash drive, the results were just like they were before I started: I have the same version of apple tv running with all of my movies--it had no effect on my data and OS. Did I do something wrong?

What I'm trying to do is run updates. After I download an update to apple tv, it asks if I want to run the update. I tell it to do so, but nothing happens. It just returns to the General menu. When I try to run the Factory Restore, it flashes the apple logo like it's going to start, but quickly returns to the menu. I thought with a flash drive, I could start over. Is that not what this is meant to do?

I think the problem I'm having is that my partitions are wrong on my hard drive--they may not be labeled or formatted or configured properly. I fried my hard drive a few weeks ago and replaced it myself. It took a while to get it back together without a backup disk image. It's working now, but I can't participate in updates any more.

Now that I have telnet capabilities, is there something I can do to change things on the hard drive to fix it easily? Or will I have to pull the drive out again and start over?

Davilla,
The link to those image files is not working, can you direct me to a valid link. My ATV had been down for sometimes and got stuck try to recover.

Thanks
http://rapidshare.com/files/12597038...part1.rar.html
http://rapidshare.com/files/12597399...part2.rar.html
http://rapidshare.com/files/12597792...part3.rar.html
http://rapidshare.com/files/12597996...part4.rar.html

Originally Posted by Parallax

So I've actually registered just to let you know that I have de-bricked my ATV after installing the BrickTV 2.4 Patchstick, but it wasn't very easy.

Starting note : I consider myself not Linux- or Mac-knowledgeable - all I do is follow other people's instructions. In this case, it's mostly a huge thanks to davilla, whose instructions I've repurposed from :
http://code.google.com/p/atv-bootloa...inuxUSBPenBoot
http://code.google.com/p/atv-bootloader/wiki/ATVBackup and
http://code.google.com/p/atv-bootloa...tEFIExtraction
plus a guide from AwkwardTV :
http://wiki.awkwardtv.org/wiki/Patchstick/Leopard
This is also based on what I remember doing, with all the trial and error taken out. It may not be 100% accurate but should give you enough to get things back to normal.

Available hardware : I have a Vista PC which also has a Mac OSX disk running Leopard. I don't have access to the Tiger install CDs.

To follow these instructions you'll need an OSX machine as well, but this probably isn't absolutely necessary - it's just the way I did it. Please note also that your ATV will be a clean 2.0.2 install at the end of this process, and that's what will be on the Restore partition too. If you want 1.0, 1.1 or whatever else on your Restore partition, you're on your own. You will also lose everything (music, movies etc.) stored on your ATV. Finally, it will also be in a vanilla state, ie. not hacked in any way.

Please note that I take no responsibility for any damage you may cause your Mac, ATV, neighbours, pets etc.

1. Get a USB stick. I used a 1GB one, but 512MB would be fine.
2. Boot into OSX.
3. Go to http://mesu.apple.com/data/OS/061-46...694-5428-3.dmg and download the ATV 2.0.2 update.
4. Create a directory on your Desktop. Call it Patch (or whatever).
5. Open the ATV 2.0.2 dmg you downloaded in step 3. This should mount as OSBoot.
6. Once it's mounted, open it and copy the boot.efi file from /System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi into the Patch directory on your desktop.
7. Download http://atv-bootloader.googlecode.com...ery-0.6.tar.gz
8. Extract that into the Patch directory on your desktop.
9. If you haven't already, format your USB stick as HFS+ Journalled in DiskUtil. Call it something like Patchstick.
10. Make a directory on the USB stick called "recovery."
11. Copy the following files from the ATV 2.0.2 update to the recovery directory on the USB stick :

Code:

mach_kernel.prelink
/System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi
/System/Library/CoreServices/BootLogo.png 
/System/Library/CoreServices/com.apple.Boot.plist

12. In your Patch directory on your Desktop, edit com.apple.Boot.plist and change the following line

Code:

<string>atv-boot=auto video=vesafb</string>

to

Code:

<string>atv-boot=patchstick video=vesafb</string>

13. Copy 2Z694-5428-3.dmg (the ATV 2.0.2 update file) into the recovery directory on your USB stick. Rename it OS.dmg.
14. On your USB stick in the recovery directory, edit com.apple.Boot.plist and change the "Boot Logo" and "Kernel Flags" strings as per below.

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
        <key>Background Color</key>
        <integer>0</integer>
        <key>Boot Fail Logo</key>
        <string></string>
        <key>Boot Logo</key>
        <string>BootLogo.png</string>
        <key>Kernel</key>
        <string>mach_kernel</string>
        <key>Kernel Cache</key>
        <string>mach_kernel.prelink</string>
        <key>Kernel Flags</key>
        <string>rp=file:///OS.dmg</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Note : It seems like I should have named my USB stick's partition "Recovery," but I didn't and it worked fine, go figure.

15. Copy the contents of the Patch directory on your desktop to the root of your USB stick.
16. Open a Terminal window. If this scares you, you should probably stop now.
17. Discover what disk number your USB stick is. The easiest way is through diskutil :

Code:

diskutil list

For me, my USB stick was /dev/disk3, but yours may differ.
17a. This step may or may not be required, but being a n00b I thought I may as well do it (assuming you called your USB stick "Patchstick") :
sudo bless --folder=/Volumes/Patchstick/ --file=/Volumes/Patchstick/boot.efi
18. Type

Code:

THEDISK=/dev/whatever_disk_number_your_usb_stick_is

For me, as I said that was /dev/disk3. If you get this wrong, this is your big chance to destroy your Mac or PC installs. No pressure.
19. You're now going to make the USB stick bootable by the ATV. Type

Code:

START=$(gpt -r show $THEDISK | grep '1  GPT part' | awk '{print $1}')
SIZE=$(gpt -r show $THEDISK | grep '1  GPT part' | awk '{print $2}')
diskutil unmountDisk $THEDISK
gpt remove -i 1 $THEDISK
diskutil unmountDisk $THEDISK
gpt add -b $START -s $SIZE -i 1 -t "5265636F-7665-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC" $THEDISK
diskutil unmountDisk $THEDISK

20. Take your USB stick to the ATV and connect it. Press and hold "Menu" and "-" on the remote and the ATV should then boot off your USB stick.
21. When the magic has finished, take a note of the IP address of your ATV.
22. Go back to your Terminal window :

Code:

telnet the.ip.address.you.just.got

23. Login as root, password root.
24. Type the following into the resulting prompt :

Code:

cd /
mkfs.hfsplus -v Recovery /dev/sda2
mkdir src dst
mount /dev/sdb1 src
fsck.hfsplus -f /dev/sda2
mount -t hfsplus -o rw,force /dev/sda2 dst
cp -arp src/recovery/* dst/
sync
umount src
umount dst
rmdir src dst

25. Remove the USB stick.
26. Power cycle the ATV.
27. Wait until you get a BrickTV screen or a screen saying it's patching, and 10 minutes to go.
28. On the remote, press and hold Menu and "-" until the ATV reboots.
29. Perform a normal factory restore.
30. Unbricking your ATV, done.

Hi,

i got a question regarding this thing. I never got an ip-adress after booting with this patchstick. The only thing i got is a 'failed'-message : atv-boot=auto/manual/patchstick failed -- starting telnetd ...
What's wrong, i tried it several times with different usb-sticks. Is somebody there who can help me ?
Thank you very much
CyRus