[unmesh]

I installed "top" on my ATV2 running GreenPoison 6.1 jailbreak over iOS 4.2.1 and noticed that AppleTV is consuming more than 90% of CPU while sitting at the Movies menu on a freshly rebooted ATV2. I also have Keith's last posted daily of XBMC installed through SSH though this is likely not germane to this particular issue.

Is high CPU utilization at what should be idle normal or have I somehow borked my installation?

If not, is there anything else I can look at to get additional insight?

Thanks.

[davilla]

it's normal, xbmc is rendering the Movies page as fast as it can.

[unmesh]

Sorry to have been insufficiently precise. This is at the AppleTV native Movies menu and the AppleTV process is at 90+%; XBMC has not been selected to run yet.

Does the same reasoning continue to apply?

[davilla]

Oh, that movies.

top -o cpu (apt-get install top) and that will tell which app is consuming cpu. when xbmc is not running in front, it's not doing anything. It's a) some other frapp or app doing something.

[unmesh]

Its the AppleTV process itself that is the culprit

[davilla]

Its the AppleTV process itself that is the culprit

what other 3rd party frapps do you have installed ? and are you doing vnc ?

[unmesh]

My wife is observing that the Lowtide UI is slow too which is a change.

No VNC; the only thing I can think of is installing and then uninstalling updatebegone through NitoTV and then editing /etc/hosts to achieve the same result.

[davilla]

not a clue and its the first time I've every heard of this.

[unmesh]

Thanks for thinking about what might have happened.

I'm going to restore 4.2.1 and go through the jailbreak and reinstall, this time monitoring the performance before and after any additional installs.

[bircoe]

be careful when you restore, do a google search for Tinyumbrella or you may end up restoring 4.3

[unmesh]

be careful when you restore, do a google search for Tinyumbrella or you may end up restoring 4.3

Thanks, Bircoe. I've saved my SHSH blobs!

[unmesh]

I restored 4.2.1, redid the JB and am running the XBMC version off the repo; everything is much more responsive and the CPU utilization is not pegged like it was before.

Next step is to try Keith's daily.

[exbee]

Same issue, just want to add my experience in case it's part of a bigger problem. First possible clue from syslog:

Mar 19 04:48:34 Apple-TV /Applications/AppleTV.app/AppleTV[253]: PM: Set PM idle time to 15 seconds.
Mar 19 04:48:34 Apple-TV /Applications/AppleTV.app/AppleTV[253]: PM: Set PM assertion to hold off idle sleep.
Mar 19 04:48:34 Apple-TV /Applications/AppleTV.app/AppleTV[253]: PM: Failed to create idle sleep enable assertion: e00002c7
Mar 19 04:52:37 Apple-TV /Applications/AppleTV.app/AppleTV[258]: Serial Number:<removed>\n*** OS 8C154, IR 01.28, iBoot 931.71.16, SW 4.1.1 / 1553 ***\n*** OS partition size/free:786432000/251166720 ***\n*** data partition size/free:7130374144/6864257024 ***\n*** AVF main repository size:5519761408 ***\n*** AVF secondary repository size:209715200 ***\n*** Current Date:3/19/11 4:52 AM ***\n*** Time Zone:US/Pacific ***

My ATV2 is not always in this weirdo state, but when it is iostat gives load average well above 6, top gives 0% idle, and the only way to recover is to reboot which doesn't always fix the problem.

When it does happen, there is a general sluggishness in the apple UI (before launching xbmc)

The other, possibly related issue I have is that xbmc will crash after some time (an hour or two and then every couple of minutes) because I think of this:

Mar 19 04:42:42 Apple-TV configd[32]: watchdog: com.apple.frontrow not responding; forcing a crash
Mar 19 04:42:42 Apple-TV configd[32]: watchdog: can be disabled with the shell command: defaults write com.apple.mobilewatchdog WatchdogEnabled -bool no
Mar 19 04:42:42 Apple-TV ReportCrash[247]: Saved crashreport to /Library/Logs/CrashReporter/AppleTV-2011-03-19-044242.plist using uid: 0 gid: 0, synthetic_euid: 0 egid: 0

From a UI perspective, the only visible clue that this is going on is that several items are missing under the standard apple 'Movies' menu. "In Theaters" is present, but "Top Movies", "Genres" "Search" are missing. Reboot/unplug and things normally go back to normal.

So the point is - it's a long shot, but if AppleTV process is eating CPU, watchdog kills com.apple.frontrow, which takes xbmc with it. At this point, the box never recovers (frontrow keeps being killed by watchdog?), so xbmc can't be used for more than a brief amount of time before it too is killed.

Posted this because it might be a piece of a bigger puzzle (maybe not even xbmc related I don't know how all the bits fit together yet).

4.2.1 jailbroken with greenpoison, updatebegone and /etc/hosts changes made. xbmc communicating with ubuntu ushare. It also happens if xbmc is not playing media. Unwilling to attempt re-jailbreaking at this time.

Will try to narrow the cause down.. it's sporadic.

[bircoe]

This could be why people that have blocked updates still experience crashing...

Theres a hint in this line:
Mar 19 04:42:42 Apple-TV configd[32]: watchdog: can be disabled with the shell command: defaults write com.apple.mobilewatchdog WatchdogEnabled -bool no

edit: hmmm... seems running this command achieves nothing:

Living-Room-Apple-TV:~ root# defaults write com.apple.mobilewatchdog WatchdogEnabled -bool no
-sh: defaults: command not found

Anyone know how to install the defaults application, which package is it installed with?

[davilla]

This could be why people that have blocked updates still experience crashing...

Theres a hint in this line:
Mar 19 04:42:42 Apple-TV configd[32]: watchdog: can be disabled with the shell command: defaults write com.apple.mobilewatchdog WatchdogEnabled -bool no

edit: hmmm... seems running this command achieves nothing:

Living-Room-Apple-TV:~ root# defaults write com.apple.mobilewatchdog WatchdogEnabled -bool no
-sh: defaults: command not found

Anyone know how to install the defaults application, which package is it installed with?

"defaults" is missing from iOS.