Use Macfuse & MacFusion to connect to Apple TV

I like my Apple TV. I like it even more with Boxee installed on it. I like it even more than that with an external drive plugged into the back of my Apple TV. And lastly, I like being able to access said drive with ease.

The Setup

As I said in the opening I have Boxee installed on my Apple TV (You can do that too, here). I have enabled an external hard drive on my Apple TV and have it plugged right into the spare USB port on the back. It's a hack that involves installing nitoTV, it's a pretty straight forward process, give it a go.

The Problem

Until now I've been accessing my Apple TV via SSH and also using Transmit (sFTP). I'd really like to be able to access the data more natively by just mounting the drive via Finder. Enter MacFuse and MacFusion.

The Solution

MacFusion -  Macfusion is an open source Mac application that allows you to work with files on servers across the internet, as if they were sitting on your computer. Macfusion presents a Volume in Finder, letting you use your favorite Mac applications to work with them.

In order to use MacFusion to mount the drive, you'll first need MacFuse .

The Steps

  1. Grab MacFUSE-2.0.3,2.dmg - Once installed it'll look like this in your System Preferences.


     
  2. Now that you have MacFuse installed, open it up by clicking on the MacFuse icon in your System Preferences. You'll want to check the box "Show Beta Versions" and click the button titled "Check For Updates". That should update you to version 2.1.5.


     
  3. Now it's time to download and install MacFusion.
     
  4. There's an issue with the current version of MacFusion but there's a fix here. I'll outline the steps below (pretty simple):

    1. Quit MacFusion
    2. Open up Terminal (Applications/Utilities/Terminal) and copy/paste the following:
     
    rm /Applications/Macfusion.app/Contents/PlugIns/sshfs.mfplugin/Contents/Resources/sshnodelay.so
  5. Everything should be installed and ready to roll. Now lets connect to the Apple TV. Open MacFusion. Click the + icon in the bottom left corner, select SSHFS. Check the settings below:



    Name the mount whatever you'd like. I named mine "Apple TV - USB Drive" because I want the mount point to be that specific drive. For ease of use, I can create another with the path to where I would store files specifically for Boxee.

    The Host is "AppleTV.Local", username and password are both "frontrow". The path you can leave blank or you can enter the full path to your external drive.

    Thats it! Hit "OK" and then "Mount". Should look like this:



    You'll see the drive in finder or on your desktop like so:

Done and Done

By the way, you can also use this same setup to connect to remote sites and local machines for file sharing. As you can see below I'm using MacFusion to connect to a local office machine.