Getting XBMC working on Apple TV (using only windows)

KevinSartori Wrote:Thanks for the help, Pooh!

I use the Tomato firmware with my router and I couldn't find anything that would block port 22 or prevent ssh. To be sure, I forwarded port 22 anyway. I upgraded my factory refreshed 2.0 to 2.2. Unplugged, put in USB stick, plugged back in. Everything seems to go okay there. I unplugged, pulled out the USB stick and then plugged back in.

No go. I still get Network error: Connection refused with both WinSCP and PuTTY. I am able to ping the AppleTV just fine. I wish I could figure out what's going wrong. To me, it just seems like the USB stick isn't actually installing all of the stuff it should be, but I don't know how to figure out whether this is true or not since nothing on the AppleTV itself changes to let you know whether or not it worked!

I guess I might have to wait for the "official" Boxee/XBMC Windows program unless anyone out there has any ideas...

did you see

"installing dropbear" when booting off the patchstick ?

Thanks for the help, Davilla!

I don't see it, but I'm not exactly sure, so I took a pic:



That's what's left on the screen at the end. Do you need me to snap a pic of the beginning of the boot process? Do you see anything missing?

Thanks again!

Hmn.. well thats pretty much what I saw and I took the "done" line near the bottom to indicate it was working, when of and tried SSH and it asked for a username/password which proved to me it was.

Just double checking - when you attempt to connect with Putty do you get asked for a username at all or does it drop connection before then?

When I launch PuTTY, I type in the IP address of the AppleTV, in this case 192.168.1.107. Connection type is set to SSH by default. I hit the Open button and a PuTTY Fatal Error window pops up that says Network error: Connection refused. Which, actually, is the same exact error I get if I do a factory restore back to 2.0 and try to connect without using the patchstick.

My understanding of this is pretty limited, but it sure seems like the patchstick isn't installing whatever's required to make an SSH connection.

KevinSartori Wrote:Thanks for the help, Davilla!

I don't see it, but I'm not exactly sure, so I took a pic:



That's what's left on the screen at the end. Do you need me to snap a pic of the beginning of the boot process? Do you see anything missing?

Thanks again!

This output is from a patchstick created from OSX bits and not one created from atvusb-creator which uses atv-bootloader (penbuntu). As I have no clue what it is doing, I can't help much.

I wish I knew why it wasn't working - looks exactly like mine did.

Have you tried using a laptop (or long network cable) and getting all items in the same hub?

Also I'm assuming that the machine you're connecting from is in he same IP range (not all are if you;re using home wireless/bridging etc)

I'll give you a big hint, messages that say "failed", "no such file or directory" mean that this patchstick has a serious problem and will never work without some effort in understand it's operation and fixing it.

Since it can't find "stuff/installer.d/*" nothing has been installed and that's why ssh does not work

Windows version of atvusb-creator is maybe a week out depending how much time I can spend working on it.

KevinSartori Wrote:When I launch PuTTY, I type in the IP address of the AppleTV, in this case 192.168.1.107. Connection type is set to SSH by default. I hit the Open button and a PuTTY Fatal Error window pops up that says Network error: Connection refused. Which, actually, is the same exact error I get if I do a factory restore back to 2.0 and try to connect without using the patchstick.

My understanding of this is pretty limited, but it sure seems like the patchstick isn't installing whatever's required to make an SSH connection.

It could be that the patchstick in question messes up Kerberos. Without Kerberos you will need to use SSH v1.

1. Start putty
2. Enter IP address of ATV
3. In the left hand side select Connection - SSH
4. Under "preferred SSH protocol versions" select 1 or 1 only
   

Give it a try

/mikkel

Since I don't have a Mac, I did a similar thing to get my ATV accessible. The first time I did the DD on a 1GB usbstick and it was too small to fit the ~1GB file. I noticed the in / out bytes summary at the end of the using DD didn't match up. I tried the stick anyway and it booted and looked just like that screenshot however it didn't work.

I did the dd on the image again this time to a 2GB usbdrive and presto, ssh was working. So, lesson learned was make sure you usbstick is big enough.

Nuts. Tyche, it looks like you're correct and that my problems stem from the USB stick I bought being slightly too small. I decided to recreate the patchstick and here's what I got at the end. I noticed this the first time, but promptly forgot about it because the patchstick appeared to boot okay:

rawwrite dd for windows version 0.5.
Written by John Newbigin <jn@it.swin.edu.au>
This program is covered by the GPL. See copying.txt for details
999,292,928Error writing file: 27 The drive cannot find the sector requested
999,292,928
954+0 records in
953+0 records out

If I realized all the trouble that darn USB stick would cause me, I would have spent a few bucks more and bought 2GB instead! I'll have to head over to Best Buy tomorrow.

Oh, Mikkeland, I did try your advice with PuTTY but unfortunately I still got the dreaded Network error: Connection refused. Thanks anyway! A bigger stick should do the job.

That's what she said!

Sorry, I couldn't resist...

I'll report my results here tomorrow. Thanks again for all the help, guys!