Getting XBMC working on Apple TV (using only windows)
#1
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Hi all,

Well I had a bit of an epic getting this to work - not XBMC itself, but SSH and so on, now while everyone was very helpful with guides etc they were all either for Mac or Linux (or at least the ones I found) so here is a guide for all those M$ slaves out there Big Grin

1) Get hold of the following - you'll need them:

2) Copy (and extract where needed) all you files to a folder (for ease later)
3) Rename dd.exe to dd-removable.exe - this will mean that it will only look for removable drive, which given how vicious this program is is very useful (thanks davilla Wink)
4) Insert your USB and note its drive letter
5) Navigate to the folder where you copied all your files to
6) Open a command prompt (Start then Run and type CMD) and type:
mountvol g: /D
Replace the "g:" with the drive letter of your USB.
7) Type dd-removable.exe --list - it will now tell you what your drive label will be
8) Type dd-removable.exe if=atvpatch-3.0.img of=\\?\Device\Harddisk2\DP(1)0-0+9 bs=1M --progress - replacing the part after of= with the label you got from the list

\\?\Device\Harddisk2\DP(1)0-0+9 is what --list returns as my removable drive like so

\\.\Volume{1726eb56-9863-11dd-9571-0013d4dea6d7}\
link to \\?\Device\Harddisk2\DP(1)0-0+9
removeable media
Mounted on \\.\f:

9) Follow the usual rules for a while, which is power off your AppleTV, insert the USB, power up and wait/pray Wink

If all went well then you'll see something about all done and it will not have taken very long at all.

Should you not get this then you may need to try another USB drive, thankfully a thread has just started that will help you out with this part (http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=38870)

10) Now power off your AppleTV, remove the USB stick and power back up.
11) Now this threw me but once its all back up nothing looks different at all, but take note of the IP address of the machine (under networking)!!!
12) Go back to your PC and start WinSCP, put in the IP of your AppleTV - by the way the username and password are both frontrow (something everyone seemed to know but took some finding Rolleyes)
13) Copy the file in a normal windows way now to the default directory on the AppleTV
14) Exit WinSCP and launch putty, again enter the IP and after giving the username and password it will come back with bash something or other - type here sudo sh ./XBMCLauncher-0.2-debug.run (the current version, but use whatever filename you actually need)

It will then say the following:

Verifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing XBMCLauncher 0.2-debug.....
== Extracting XBMCLauncher.frappliance
XBMCLauncher.frappliance successfully installed.

Finder must be restarted in order to complete the installation.

Would you like to do this now? (Y/n) Y

== Restarting Finder

15) Go back to your AppleTV and it should have a XBMC menu at the top (if not reboot and it should appear) - go into it and choose update, assuming you;re connected to the internet okay it will go off and get a current list and install away.

Thats it, it may seem a lot but believe me after banging my head against a brick wall for three days (damn near solid) this really is the easy route Eek

Have fun..

Lastly I'd like to thank both davilla, pooh and of course my wife (who put up with my grumps!!) without who's help I would have given up long ago Nod
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#2
Looking forward to trying this.. Missing one key component though. I need a ATV :-)

Guess I will buy one this week and give it a go.
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#3
Hey! I'm impatient, so I thought I'd give this a try. I'm not having any luck, though.

At Step 7, I type: dd-removable.exe --list and I get:

NT Block Device Objects
\\?\Device\Harddisk2\Partition0
link to \\?\Device\Harddisk2\DR4
Removable media other than floppy. Block size = 512
size is 1000275456 bytes


When I extracted ATVpatchstick2.1.img.bz2, I ended up with an image file called ATVpatchstick2.1.img, so I figured my next line in the command prompt should be:

dd-removable.exe if=ATVpatchstick2.1.img of=\\?\Device\Harddisk2\DR4 bs=1M --progress

But I get this error:

rawwrite dd for windows version 0.5.
Written by John Newbigin <[email protected]>
This program is covered by the GPL. See copying.txt for details
Output file does not match device filter removable
dd will not continue


The USB stick that I bought is a 1GB Kingston DataTraveler 110. I bought that one because it seems to work for other people. One thing I've noticed is that ATVpatchstick2.1.img is 1,060,634,624 bytes. My drive is listed above as 1000275456 bytes. Could it be that my USB stick slightly too small? Any other ideas?
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#4
I'm not sure if this matters, but if I do dd.exe --list, I get:

rawwrite dd for windows version 0.5.
Written by John Newbigin <[email protected]>
This program is covered by the GPL. See copying.txt for details
Win32 Available Volume Information
\\.\Volume{8a81f35d-d9bb-11dc-8d8a-806d6172696f}\
link to \\?\Device\HarddiskVolume1
fixed media
Mounted on \\.\c:

\\.\Volume{0b18d64f-96cb-11dd-9ec0-001558b97dd2}\
link to \\?\Device\HarddiskVolume2
fixed media
Mounted on \\.\d:

\\.\Volume{9b68f89a-64b6-11dd-b1af-806d6172696f}\
link to \\?\Device\CdRom0
CD-ROM
Mounted on \\.\f:

\\.\Volume{0b18d64c-96cb-11dd-9ec0-806d6172696f}\
link to \\?\Device\CdRom1
CD-ROM
Mounted on \\.\e:

\\.\Volume{c155fa83-989e-11dd-9ec8-001558b97dd2}\
link to \\?\Device\Harddisk2\DP(1)0-0+5
removeable media
Not mounted


NT Block Device Objects
\\?\Device\CdRom0
size is 2147483647 bytes
\\?\Device\CdRom1
size is 2147483647 bytes
\\?\Device\Harddisk0\Partition0
link to \\?\Device\Harddisk0\DR0
Fixed hard disk media. Block size = 512
size is 500107862016 bytes
\\?\Device\Harddisk0\Partition1
link to \\?\Device\HarddiskVolume1
\\?\Device\Harddisk1\Partition0
link to \\?\Device\Harddisk1\DR1
Fixed hard disk media. Block size = 512
size is 1000204886016 bytes
\\?\Device\Harddisk1\Partition1
link to \\?\Device\HarddiskVolume2
Fixed hard disk media. Block size = 512
size is 1000203305472 bytes
\\?\Device\Harddisk2\Partition0
link to \\?\Device\Harddisk2\DR4
Removable media other than floppy. Block size = 512
size is 1000275456 bytes
\\?\Device\Harddisk2\Partition1
link to \\?\Device\Harddisk2\DP(1)0-0+5
Removable media other than floppy. Block size = 512
size is 1000161792 bytes

Virtual input devices
/dev/zero (null data)
/dev/random (pseudo-random data)
- (standard input)

Virtual output devices
- (standard output)


I noticed that this time it refers to the USB stick as \\?\Device\Harddisk2\DP(1)0-0+5, so I figured I should also try:

dd-removable.exe if=ATVpatchstick2.1.img of=\\?\Device\Harddisk2\DP(1)0-0+5 bs=1M --progress

Unfortunately, I got the same error:

rawwrite dd for windows version 0.5.
Written by John Newbigin <[email protected]>
This program is covered by the GPL. See copying.txt for details
Output file does not match device filter removable
dd will not continue


I'm stuck and I don't know what to do...
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#5
Okay, I'm a little closer. After checking out http://www.chrysocome.net/dd, I decided to change the device to \\?\Device\Harddisk2\Partition0. So this time I tried:

dd-removable.exe if=ATVpatchstick2.1.img of=\\?\Device\Harddisk2\Partition0 bs=1M --progress

Bingo! It worked! AppleTV booted up, showed me a bunch of white text which ended with "All done". I've unplugged the USB stick and rebooted, but now I get "Connection refused" with both WinSCP and Putty.

Grrrr....

Any ideas? Should I try again?
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#6
Okay, fwiw, I had let my AppleTV upgrade to 2.2. I just did a factory restore, which brought it back to 2.0. Booted the USB stick. No problem. Unplugged the AppleTV, removed the USB stick, plugged the AppleTV back in. Boots fine. Try to connect with either WinSCP or Putty and it get:

Network error: Connection refused

I don't use a firewall. Windows firewall is off. My router sees it as a connected device. Both the router and AppleTV agree on what the IP address is.

Man, I am out of ideas. Can anyone help?
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#7
So did you apply the patch to fw2.0 or fw2.2 ?

I have the same setup as you have, factory restore is to 2.0, did an uprade to 2.2 and _then_ applied the patch.

Oh... and did you double check the IP address of your ATV, maybe it changed (DHCP)

HTH
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#8
Actually, I tried both. I started with 2.2 and, as a last resort, did a factory restore to 2.0. Both booted from the USB stick okay, but it seems like whatever it's supposed to do doesn't "stick" (hehe) on reboot.

I have the AppleTV set up with my router to have a static IP address of 192.168.1.107. I did double-check the IP address in both the AppleTV and my router.

I'm bummed out...
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#9
First off, I would start with fw2.2 only.

Anything blocking port 22?
Can you ping ATV from your PC?
Does your router have policies that prevent port 22 or SSH?
Is your ssh client (Putty?) setup to DO ssh (not scp, sftp)?

Just some thoughts
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#10
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...
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#11
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 ?
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#12
Thanks for the help, Davilla!

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

Image

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!
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#13
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?
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#14
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.
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#15
KevinSartori Wrote:Thanks for the help, Davilla!

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

Image

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.
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