Installing SlimServer on an AppleTV

One of the services I needed to move off my server before shutting it down was SlimServer which runs my Squeezeboxes. I had looked at a few small PCs that were ultra quiet and as I was looking at the Shuttle website, it compared one of their boxes to a Mac Mini. Hmmm, I have an extra one of those lying around that I could use and then remembered I have an AppleTV that I’m not using. So, I decided to see if I could install SlimServer on the AppleTV as it is fanless and super quiet. Here’s what I did:

1. Download Patchstick
2. Follow the procedure and install Patchstick from a USB thumb drive
3. Download the Mac OS X version of SlimServer
4. Download the XMRadio plugin
5. Edit XROAPI.pm in the plugin by commenting out

   	if ( defined( $self->{activeClient} ) ) {		return [			$client->string('PLUGIN_XMRADIO_ERROR_HEADER'),			$client->string('PLUGIN_XMRADIO_IN_USE') . ' ' . $client->name()		];	}

   So that I can have more than 1 Squeezebox talking to XM at the same time.

6. From the AppleTV, enable AFP in the awakwardTV menu
7. Mount the SlimServer dmg file that was downloaded above
8. From the image, copy Install Files/SlimServer.prefPane/Resources/server to your desktop
9. Place the modified XMRadio plugin in ~/Destkop/server/Plugins
10. Mount the AppleTV volume via AFP
11. Modify ~/Desktop/server/Slim Launcher.app/Contents/Resources/Start Slim Server.sh to add

    HOME=/Users/frontrow; export HOME

    before the ./slimserver.pl line

12. Copy ~/Desktop/server to the AppleTV’s AFP volume
13. Create a folder on the Desktop called SlimServer
14. In that folder create 2 files. The first is called StartupParameters.plist and it contains:

    {  Description     = "SlimServer";  Provides        = ("SlimServer");  Requires        = ("Disks");    Uses		= ("mDNSResponder", "Resolver", "DirectoryServices", "NFS", "Network Time");    OrderPreference	= "Last";    Messages =    {	start = "Starting SlimServer";	stop = "Stopping SlimServer";    };}

    The second is called SlimServer and it contains:

    #!/bin/sh. /etc/rc.commonSERVER_RUNNING=`ps -axww | grep "slimp3.pl|slimp3d|slimserver.pl|slimserver" | grep -v grep | cat`StartService() {ConsoleMessage "Starting SlimServer"if [ z"$SERVER_RUNNING" = z ] ; then	pushd "/Users/frontrow/server"    sudo -u frontrow "Slim Launcher.app/Contents/Resources/Start Slim Server.sh"    popdfiif [ z"$#" != z"0" ] ; then    ConsoleMessage -Sfi}StopService() {if [ z"$SERVER_RUNNING" != z ] ; then    kill `echo $SERVER_RUNNING | sed -n 's/^[ ]*([0-9]*)[ ]*.*$/1/p'`fi}RunService "$1"

15. Copy the SlimServer folder to the AppleTV’s AFP volume
16. Login via ssh using

    ssh -1 frontrow@appletv.local

    password is frontrow

17. Change the root file system to read/write using

    sudo mount -uw /

18. Move the SlimServer folder using

    sudo mv /Users/frontrow/SlimServer /Library/StartupItems/

19. Make the SlimServer file executable

    sudo chmod +x /Library/StartupItems/SlimServer/SlimServer

20. Change the owner

    sudo chown -R root:wheel /Library/StartupItems/SlimServer

21. Disable auto updating

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

22. Restart the AppleTV

    sudo reboot

23. From Safari goto: http://appletv.local:9000/
24. Change the music directory in the SlimServer prefs to /mnt/Media/Media Files

The only problem so far is that it creates multiple Albums for each album due to how the AppleTV stores the music.