I see this thread a lot on FireCore and various other forums. Running XBMC under ATV2 works fine and then one day it starts crashing back to Lowtide after a random amount of time.
What’s actually happening is ATV Updater Service is checking for updates with Apple and once an update becomes available it tries to prompt, of course XBMC isn’t designed to allow Lowtide prompts take the responding view and it crashes.
The easiest way to solve the issue is to SSH into the Apple TV, install a text editor (I prefer VIM, but Nano works too) and add a block to the hosts file so that when the updater service checks it doesn’t actually reach Apples update servers.
ssh root@apple-tv.local
apt-get install vim
vim /etc/hosts
Make your /etc/hosts file look like the following
## # Host Database # # localhost is used to configure the loopback interface # when the system is booting. Do not change this entry. ## 127.0.0.1 localhost 255.255.255.255 broadcasthost ::1 localhost fe80::1%lo0 localhost 127.0.0.1 mesu.apple.com
You’ll notice the last line adds 127.0.0.1 mesu.apple.com. Once you have added that line, save the file and all will now be good in the world of XBMC.
Keep in mind, if you choose to update your ATV2 in the future, you will need to edit this file and comment or remove that line so it can connect to the update servers.
