After getting Debian successfully installed on the AppleTV, I wondered exactly how many services can run on it without overloading it. So far, the following services are running:

• Netatalk / avahi-daemon
• Samba
• GKrellMd
• OpenVPN
• Apache 2 + PHP5
• Asterisk 1.6 + Cepstral TTS + Lobstertech VoiceChanger + PHPAGI
• ircd-hybrid – IRC Server
• Nagios 3 with ircd-hybrid integration

Netatalk / avahi-daemon

This allows the AppleTV to show up on the network as a Macintosh OS X shared drive. We could easily plug in a USB external drive and this extra drive would also be shared on the network. If you want more information on configuring Netatalk on Linux, check my earlier blog posts on the subject.

Samba

This allows the AppleTV to show up on the network as a Windows shared drive.

GKrellMd

My favorite little monitoring app for Gnome, GKrellM allows you to monitor the server in real time from a little desktop widget.

OpenVPN

A simple VPN server which allows you to tunnel home from work or coffee shops.

Apache 2 + PHP5

A standard Apache 2+PHP5 install is running on this machine. Here is a screenshot of the default page I created for it:

In order to conserve memory, decrease some Apache config values:

<IfModule mpm_prefork_module>
    StartServers          1
    MinSpareServers       1
    MaxSpareServers      5
    MaxClients          50
    MaxRequestsPerChild   0
</IfModule>

WebDAV is enabled so I am able to quickly and easily edit this site using Coda.

Asterisk 1.6 + Cepstral TTS + Lobstertech VoiceChanger + PHPAGI

This AppleTV runs my VoIP phone server. Phone service is through Flowroute. If you call my phone number, it speaks out text to the caller using Cepstral TTS. Anyone placing calls using this phone system can spoof any outgoing number or change their voice with the help of the Lobstertech VoiceChanger module. Incoming spoofed CallerID numbers are “unmasked” and the true number is revealed. The main phone script is written with PHP code using PHPAGI. Surprisingly, the AppleTV CPU handles the Text to Speech very well and I don’t notice any CPU strain. Very flexible and fun phone system.

Here is a sample of what the code looks like:

function doMainMenu() {

    global $debug;
    global $fh;
    global $agi;

    $count = 0;

    while ($count < 5) {
    // Say Main Menu Script
    $result = $agi->swift_get_data('Press 1 to ring the house phones or press 0 to leave a voice message.');

    // Capture which keys were pressed
    $keys = $result['result'];
    $key = $keys[0];
    if ($debug) fwrite($fh, "Key Press:[". $keys['data'] . "]\n");

    // Do something, based on which keys they pressed
    if ($key == "1") doRingHousePhones();
    elseif ($key == "0") doGoToVoicemail();
    elseif ($key == "*") doLoginToVoicemail();
    else {
      $agi->swift("You didnt pick any options.");
    }
    $count++;
    }

    $agi->swift("Goodbye.");
  }

ircd-hybrid

The IRC server is used for Nagios 3 logging at the moment

Nagios 3 with ircd-hybrid integration

This is the newest addition, and a very sweet setup at that. Nagios 3 is an open source monitoring software. It monitors all of my equipment and servers and the services which are running on them. If CPU gets a little hot, or hard drive starts filling up, or website stops responding, it sends email/SMS notifications, and also sends a color coded notification to #nagios on the IRC server. Nagios uses Apache for the web front end.

General AppleTV tweaks

It turned out that the swap partition that I created was only 25MB or was only showing up as 25MB. This is a problem since this AppleTV only has 256MB of internal RAM. I ended up setting up a loopback swap file which basically allows you to have a ‘file’ on your main partition which will behave as a partition. This 512MB file is mounted as the swap for the system and is working perfectly.

dd if=/dev/zero of=swapfile bs=1k seek=512k count=1
mkswap swapfile
losetup -f
losetup /dev/loop0 swapfile
swapon /dev/loop0

You can verify that it worked with either of these:

cat /proc/meminfo | grep -i swap
free

Here is a screenshot of ‘top’ running on the AppleTV with all of these services running:

Check out the load average! This machine is simply kickin’ back!

If anyone is interested in more detail how any of these services are configured or if you have any suggestions on what other services should be added to this project, drop me a comment.

I pulled the drive out of the AppleTV and hooked it up to my mac with a USB to IDE converter cable (All of this work is done on the Mac running Ubuntu under VMWare). It would be a little easier simply having a Linux machine handy. Then we wouldn’t have to deal with the virtual machine and host OS fighting for the USB devices. Anyway, you just need that AppleTV drive plugged into a Linux host to do these commands:

I used this method to prepare the drive:
http://code.google.com/p/atv-bootloader/wiki/PartitioningLinux

Then booted up a Debian installer with VMWare, and installed Debian to partition #4 on the drive with partition #5 as swap. Do NOT install GRUB to the MBR, the recovery files that are placed in the two AppleTV partitions will search for menu.lst and boot that grub. You may need to install (create) menu.lst by hand, especially if your particular distro uses GRUB2 like the latest version of Debian does.

Here is a copy of the /boot/grub/menu.lst which I created by hand:

default 0
title DebianTV
root (hd0,3)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-2-686 root=/dev/hda4 ro quiet processor.max_cstate=2
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.26-2-686
boot

After the OS install is finished, I sync and remove the drive from my Linux machine. Put the drive back in the AppleTV and booted it up. The AppleTV should boot straight to linux.

Edit: found a fix from westont on AwkwardTV:

Sure enough, looking in the /System/Library/QuickTime folder I found a ‘Disabled’ folder had been created. This folder contained the ‘QuickTimeH264.component’ file which had clearly been moved there by something. Moving this file back to the /System/Library/QuickTime folder and rebooting the ATV got everything working again.

The server ususally runs “motion”. I disable motion, and launch this command on the server:

vlc v4l:/dev/video0:size=640×480:channel=1:norm=ntsc:fps=12 –sout ‘#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,vb=768,scale=1}:duplicate{dst=std{access=mmsh,mux=asfh,dst=:8080}}’ -v –noaudio

and this on a Linux client to test:

mmsh://10.4.4.25:8081/

Then, once that is all working, I use VLC on the AppleTV to play the video to the TV. I used iScripts to get it launching.

The only problem I have right now is a 8 or so second delay.

You have to copy PreferencePanes.framework from your Tiger disks. Copy them to /System/Library/Frameworks/

This is going to lead the way to me getting the Ethernet port sharing Internet over to the XBOX. So I can get rid of the extra unneeded WiFi box under the TV.

Factory Restore
Mine factory restores back to 2.0.1

Optionally Update to AppleTV version 2.2
When I attempted upgrade to 2.2, I lost the ability to mount external USB. I have since reverted to 2.0.1. I’d like to get back to 2.1 somehow.
Edit: Nito showed me how: Howto Upgrade to 2.1

Use the Patchstick
This USB Patchstick enables SSH on the AppleTV and also does some kernel patches.
(TODO: link needed to USB file)
Edit: Check out atv-usb creator here

Connect to SSH
Test that SSH is working. Exchange ssh keys for easier logins

Upload NitoTV via SCP.
scp nito056 frontrow@AppleTV.local

Run the NitoTV installer
ssh to the AppleTV. change dir into the nito folder and run the installer with sudo privileges or as root

Upload ~/Documents via SCP
Here, some important disk images need to appear in order for NitoTV’s Smart Installer to work. Smart installer is a script within NitoTV which installs 50+ mods/patches that you definitely want working.
The disk image file names are:
MacOSXUpdCombo10.4.9Intel.dmg
recovery.dmg
(TODO: links)

Run Nito Install Software
Up to this point, all of these things are done on your PC or via SSH on the AppleTV. Now is where you switch over to your AppleTV remote. You should have NitoTV on your AppleTV main menu now. Go over there and run it.

We’re going to run Install Software from within NitoTV. I think the option is somewhere down in Settings. Run Perian install. Run mplayer codec install. Run Smart Installer.

At this point, AFP file sharing, External USB Disks and all media codecs should be set up. You’re pretty much fully modded. After this point are just extra nice stuff.

Enable VNC
http://wiki.awkwardtv.org/wiki/index.php?title=Enable_Remote_Desktop_(VNC)

Disable Updates
sudo bash -c 'echo "127.0.0.1 mesu.apple.com" >> /etc/hosts'

Install Firefox

http://wiki.awkwardtv.org/wiki/Firefox

Install vim

http://wiki.awkwardtv.org/wiki/Install_SU_and_VI

Install Boxee

http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Hack_Your_Apple_TV_With_Boxee

Install Flash

http://www.applecorellc.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=53

Install XBMC (failed)

http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=37345

General Modding Snippets

Mount drive as Read/Write
root@appletv# mount -o remount,rw /dev/disk0s3 /

General Links

http://wiki.awkwardtv.org/wiki/Take_2_Full_Update

This link has a lot of general purpose low level AppleTV modding information. However, do not follow it step by step. Nito has done most of this work for you and it is much easier to use NitoTV to do all these mods automatically.

Flash Installed (can watch Hulu)

Firefox Installed

VNC working