Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on Apple TV 1
On Friday, 31 August 2018 22:10:48 BST Andrew Udvare wrote: > On 8/31/18 2:41 PM, Mick wrote: > > What I have not fathomed yet is how to compile into the mach_kernel the > > vmlinuz and initrd the boot.efi uses to boot linux. :-/ > > (Note that I am making assumptions that the Apple TV 1st gen can be > treated kind of like a Mac.) Right, I'm not sure if it can ... > You probably should try rEFInd to help. You can get rid of it once you > are comfortable. rEFInd can be avoided: > > https://glandium.org/blog/?p=2830 > > This is what I used years back on a MacBook Pro but I was not successful > in getting an EFI stub to boot correctly. The issue was a bug with USB > 2/3 initialisation or something at the time in the kernel, which you > probably won't run into. I had to use the BIOS emulation which you might > have the ability to do. So it was rEFInd -> BIOS emulation (calls it > Windows) -> LILO (GRUB didn't work) and then Linux. Last time I was dual booting into a MacBook Pro a couple of years ago, I think I used CONFIG_EFI_STUB on linux and no boot manager at the time. The MacBook's boot manager listed my gentoo bootx64.efi file which booted into Linux without any drama. > Here is what it looked like (holding C at boot time): > https://i.imgtc.com/jjBY8AF.jpg (OS is macOS, "Windows" CD in the > picture was just Gentoo live CD). Yes, I recall a similar picture with my installation at the time. > Your problem can be made simpler if you have a) no desire to dual-boot > and b) no disk encryption. This would mean you only have your VFAT > partition for EFI and your main partition. Well, this box has a 32bit EFI, for which a special boot.efi[1] binary was developed a long time ago to boot a mach_kernel executable.[2] The mach_kernel is compiled to contain a compressed vmlinuz and initrd image for the Linux OS. The /boot partition is on an 'AppleTV Recovery' (AF04) partition type with an HFS+ fs. At least this is how OSMC and from what I understand older Gentoo installations were booting these devices. However, all this was happening 10 years ago. I don't know if I can bypass all this malarkey and just compile a kernel with an EFI stub and without initrd to boot with. [1] https://www.developerfusion.com/project/24162/atvbootloader/ [2] https://github.com/davilla/atv-bootloader -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on Apple TV 1
On 8/31/18 2:41 PM, Mick wrote: > > What I have not fathomed yet is how to compile into the mach_kernel the > vmlinuz and initrd the boot.efi uses to boot linux. :-/ > (Note that I am making assumptions that the Apple TV 1st gen can be treated kind of like a Mac.) You probably should try rEFInd to help. You can get rid of it once you are comfortable. rEFInd can be avoided: https://glandium.org/blog/?p=2830 This is what I used years back on a MacBook Pro but I was not successful in getting an EFI stub to boot correctly. The issue was a bug with USB 2/3 initialisation or something at the time in the kernel, which you probably won't run into. I had to use the BIOS emulation which you might have the ability to do. So it was rEFInd -> BIOS emulation (calls it Windows) -> LILO (GRUB didn't work) and then Linux. Here is what it looked like (holding C at boot time): https://i.imgtc.com/jjBY8AF.jpg (OS is macOS, "Windows" CD in the picture was just Gentoo live CD). Your problem can be made simpler if you have a) no desire to dual-boot and b) no disk encryption. This would mean you only have your VFAT partition for EFI and your main partition. -- Andrew signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on Apple TV 1
On Friday, 31 August 2018 17:22:43 BST Andrew Udvare wrote: > On 8/31/18 11:31 AM, Mick wrote: > > Hi All, > > > > Would anyone have *recent* experience of installing and running Gentoo > > plus > > > Kodi on the above? It has a Pentium-M with Apple's 32bit EFI. > > It also has a GeForce Go 7300 which is still supported. 304.137 of the > proprietary driver is still in the tree. From what I can tell you will > be better off with the proprietary driver over Nouveau. > > I question if it can handle running Kodi. Maybe you would want to use > something else for video playback/media management? Yes, it can run it, at least it could last year using the OSMC build based on Dedian. > You definitely would want to cross-compile everything for this machine > on a modern system, with minimal dependencies since you only have 512 MB > of RAM to work with. You can set Kodi to start with xinitrc or you can > have something like SDDM show Kodi as an option. > > Nouveau may work for you other than hardware acceleration of video > decoding. Maybe that CPU can handle 480P MPEG-2 and non-HD XviD but > almost certainly not x264 or HEVC (I doubt the OpenGL renderer can help > here). If you are willing to convert files and use lower resolutions > then this may be acceptable. TBH I'm mostly using it for audio, but 720p video plays quite respectably and by the time the TV upscales it to 1080 it shows a very acceptable picture. > https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/VideoAcceleration/ > > Conflicting information here as Nvidia says there are no VDPAU features > supported by this graphics card. > http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/304.137/README/supportedchip > s.html What I have not fathomed yet is how to compile into the mach_kernel the vmlinuz and initrd the boot.efi uses to boot linux. :-/ -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on Apple TV 1
On 8/31/18 11:31 AM, Mick wrote: > Hi All, > > Would anyone have *recent* experience of installing and running Gentoo plus > Kodi on the above? It has a Pentium-M with Apple's 32bit EFI. It also has a GeForce Go 7300 which is still supported. 304.137 of the proprietary driver is still in the tree. From what I can tell you will be better off with the proprietary driver over Nouveau. I question if it can handle running Kodi. Maybe you would want to use something else for video playback/media management? You definitely would want to cross-compile everything for this machine on a modern system, with minimal dependencies since you only have 512 MB of RAM to work with. You can set Kodi to start with xinitrc or you can have something like SDDM show Kodi as an option. Nouveau may work for you other than hardware acceleration of video decoding. Maybe that CPU can handle 480P MPEG-2 and non-HD XviD but almost certainly not x264 or HEVC (I doubt the OpenGL renderer can help here). If you are willing to convert files and use lower resolutions then this may be acceptable. https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/VideoAcceleration/ Conflicting information here as Nvidia says there are no VDPAU features supported by this graphics card. http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/304.137/README/supportedchips.html signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo on Apple TV 1
On 8/31/18 11:31 AM, Mick wrote: > Hi All, > > Would anyone have *recent* experience of installing and running Gentoo plus > Kodi on the above? It has a Pentium-M with Apple's 32bit EFI. Not exactly the same but I've tried converting old systems into usable ones with Gentoo involved. The Apple TV also has a GeForce Go 7300 which is still supported but barely. 304.137 of the proprietary driver is still in the tree for the time being. From what I can tell you will be better off with the proprietary driver over Nouveau. I question if it can handle running modern Kodi. Maybe you would want to use something else for video playback/media management? You definitely would want to cross-compile everything for this machine on a modern system, with minimal dependencies since you only have 512 MB of RAM to work with. You can set Kodi to start with xinitrc or you can have something like SDDM show Kodi as an option. Nouveau may work for you other than hardware acceleration of video decoding. Maybe that CPU can handle 480P MPEG-2 and non-HD XviD but almost certainly not x264 or HEVC (I doubt the OpenGL renderer can help here). If you are willing to convert files and use lower resolutions then this may be acceptable. You would still be able to have 6 channel output via the HDMI or optical output. Conflicting information here as Nvidia says there are no VDPAU features supported by this graphics card. http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/304.137/README/supportedchips.html vs https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/VideoAcceleration/ -- Andrew signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
[gentoo-user] Gentoo on Apple TV 1
Hi All, Would anyone have *recent* experience of installing and running Gentoo plus Kodi on the above? It has a Pentium-M with Apple's 32bit EFI. There are a number of pages on the interwebs, but all I could find mentioning Gentoo are a few years old and superseded. The latest installation supported until last year was by OSMC running debian jessie. I'd like to update this with Gentoo binaries but I'm not exactly sure how the boot process is chainloaded from Apple's kernel and in addition OSMC's debian is running systemd. -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
