Step 2 Create the USB Key (from Linux)

Connect the USB key to your Linux system, then open the "Terminal" application and cut/paste the following commands to create the USB key. The commands below assume you are using Ubuntu, but should work similarly on most common Linux distro's.

First we download the image - you have two choices:

a) To install OpenELEC to the internal hard drive of your AppleTV, run this command:

curl -O http://chewitt.openelec.tv/usb/install-hdd.img.gz

b) To install OpenELEC to the USB key, run this command:

curl -O http://chewitt.openelec.tv/usb/install-usb.img.gz

We need to check which /dev/device we are going to image. Enter your password when prompted:

sudo parted -l | grep "Disk /dev"

In the output below you can see /dev/sda is the boot drive of your Linux system (never image this drive!) and /dev/sdb is an 8GB USB key:

chewitt@ubuntu:~$ sudo parted -l | grep "Disk /dev" Disk /dev/sda: 64.4GB Disk /dev/sdb: 8196MB To unmount the USB drive we first identify the filesystem path it is mounted at:

mount | grep /dev/sdb

The output below shows that it is mounted to /media/chewitt/REDFLASH:

chewitt@ubuntu:~$ mount | grep /dev/sdb /dev/sdb1 on /media/chewitt/REDFLASH type hfsplus (ro,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks2)

Now we can unmount the drive:

umount /media/chewitt/REDFLASH

Finally we use 'dd' to write the image file to the USB key. You will need to enter the password for your user account when prompted:

gunzip -c install-hdd.img.gz | sudo dd of=/dev/sdb bs=1M

the equivalent command for a USB install would be:

gunzip -c install-usb.img.gz | sudo dd of=/dev/sdb bs=1M

Uncompressing and writing the image to the USB key will take 1-2 minutes depending on the speed of the USB key. Once USB creation has completed:

sudo eject /dev/sdb

Now you can remove the USB key and continue to Step 3 Boot the AppleTV from the USB Key :)