Step 2 Create the USB Key (from Mac OS X)

Connect the USB key to your Mac, then open Terminal.app (in /Applications/Utilities) and cut/paste the following commands to create the USB key.

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

Check which drive we are going to image:

diskutil list | grep -v disk0 | tail +2

In the output below you can see /dev/disk1 is an 8GB USB key:

macbook:~ chewitt$ diskutil list | grep -v disk0 | tail +2 /dev/disk1 #:                      TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER 0:     GUID_partition_scheme                        *8.1 GB     disk1 1:                       EFI                         209.7 MB   disk1s1 2:                 Apple_HFS USBDRIVE                7.8 GB     disk1s2 Now we unmount the USB drive:

diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1

Finally we use 'dd' to write the image file to the USB key. Notice we are using /dev/rdisk1 instead of /dev/disk1 (this is a little faster to write). You will need to enter the password for your user account when prompted:

gunzip -c install-hdd.img.gz | sudo dd of=/dev/rdisk1 bs=1m

the equivalent command for a USB install would be:

gunzip -c install-usb.img.gz | sudo dd of=/dev/rdisk1 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 you can ignore the error message about the disk being unreadable (OS X cannot read an AppleTV recovery partition) and you eject the USB:

diskutil eject /dev/disk1

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