Bleeding Edge Geek

Torrents

2011-05-17T16:11:00.001-04:00

This is all about how to download/upload encrypted torrents.

OK... I'll try keep this simple, but comment if you have problems. Sorry it's so long, I tried to keep it detailed - if you read the whole thing first you will see it is reasonably straight forward.

You need to download a program called uTorrent from http://www.utorrent.com. This allows you to download torrent files.

(Aside: torrent files contain a list of trackers/sites for the associated file you are trying to download. For example you download an Ubuntu torrent; you use uTorrent to open the downloaded Ubuntu torrent file, uTorrent reads the file and connects to the tracker sites, this in turn connects to hundreds of people with the file and downloads bits from everyone - reducing bandwidth costs to any one user.)

Before you download any torrents, open uTorrent and choose Options - Preferences, then in the pop-up window go to the bittorrent screen. From the protocol encryption section choose Forced in the outgoing option and uncheck 'Allow incoming legacy connections' - this means your downloads are encrypted in both directions (outgoing and incoming):

When your downloads are encrypted this means your ISP (internet service provider) cannot tell what you are downloading or uploading (sharing) but only that you are using torrents.

When your torrent has finished (100% complete in uTorrent) you should right-click on it within uTorrent and select remove torrent, this means you keep the data you downloaded, you just don't share it anymore - less likely for you internet provider canceling your service due to bandwidth usage, due to constant sharing. You can also set up rules to stop seeding (sharing) once you have reached 100% which decreases your upload and visibility using torrents. By going to scheduling, the following screen shows seeding till 150% (downloaded the file, and shared it back 1.5x):

Now there are several sites out there where you can download torrent files - but I would just use https://www.btjunkie.org. Two reasons, it's good, and the https means it is encrypted, so ISP doesn't know what you are clicking on really. I don't think???

Couple of things to note about torrents:

Torrents sites usually order torrents by seeds - seeds are the amount of people sharing the file who have the whole 100%. The larger number of seeds, the quicker you will get the data probably.
Leeches are people trying to get the file, you are initially a leech until you have the entire file - then you are a seeder. You still share your data while you are a leecher, helping people retrieve the chunks you have, that they don't..
Anything you download should be checked for viruses, best free software out there is MSE.

http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

So I should probably mention, using torrents you can download almost anything; music, movies, tv shows, and software. Say you download a movie or tv show, to watch it on your PC you should use a program called VLC - it's free and will pretty much play any filetype/codec.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.html

Hope you can understnad this, and it helps!

SSL Certificates for Free

2011-05-15T23:24:00.000-04:00

The following site will provide free SSL certificate, these can be used for securing a connection - but should not be considered 'trusted', as only the domain name and email are validated.

http://www.startssl.com/?app=1

This looks like it would probably minimize the hassle in creating your own self-signed certificates.

I created my own self-signed certificate using OpenSSL (http://www.openssl.org/), I don't remember the exact steps - and I wish I wrote them here, I thought I did??? The site will no doubt have all the information you need.

Slow iTunes Response with Network Located Music

2011-03-09T11:40:00.000-05:00

So I sourced this information from another site, it was referencing iTunes 8.x, however I am using 10.2.
http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/5-ways-to-speed-up-your-slow-itunes/

My problem:
Slow response to starting/stopping application, as well as initiating playback

Setup:
iTunes music stored on FreeNAS box, one iTunes users DB is remote, the others is local.

Solution:
Disable unrequired display columns:

iTunes Columns

Removing unused smart-playlists.
Disabling live updating of playlists:

Playlist Settings

Disable looking for shared services:

Libraries

Shared Setting

Remotes/Speakers

iTunes Preferences

Outcome:
SUCCESS - I have seen a noticable improvement in my iTunes performance for both users.

Streaming music

2011-02-13T22:43:00.000-05:00

I have an iPhone and I used to use an application called SimplifyMedia to stream all my music across the nets to my phone - freeing up space on the device.

After about 4 months of using it, I guess, SimplifyMedia was acquired by Google and took their service offline, so I needed to fine a replacement.

In steps Subsonic (http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp), a great little service that can run on a variety of OS, including my FreeNAS box if I chose to. I currently run Subsonic on my Ubuntu box, I have donated to the cause allowing me to use the API's (when I say me, I mean I can use apps that use the API's).

Along with Subsonic, I use iSub 3.0 (http://isubapp.com/) currently on my iPhone, the whole thing has been such a success I bought the application for my wife's phone.

I am not going to go into the nitty-gritty here, but Subsonic allows you to access your music (and video to some extent) through an encrypted connection via the web or supporting app. Once connected the user can access any of the folders available to subsonic, make playlists, rate tracks, and scrobble tunes to last.fm (apps have some limitations, but it is mostly catch-up to support APIs). iSub allows me to see what others are playing as well as chat to them, once scrobbling is implemented I am laughing - oh and the caching feature of iSub is awesome too, along with the desire to implement video streaming!

To implement the whole solution, will cost about $14.99 before tax, $10 (min) donation to Subsonic, and $4.99 for the iSub app - well worth it!

Upgrade Linux/Ubuntu Nvidia Driver

2010-12-02T21:38:00.003-05:00

I always forget how to upgrade my Nvidia graphics driver, so here it is :

To stop gdm from virtual console (after going to virtual console by giving Ctrl + Alt + F1

sudo service gdm stop

To start after installing nvidia drivers:

sudo sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-*

To start it is as simple as stopping

sudo service gdm start

And I used these commands for this little beast:
Zotac ZONE (Fanless) GeForce GT430 1 GB 128-Bit DDR3 (700/1800MHz) PCI-Express Video Card - ZT-40601-20L

FreeNAS shares on Ubuntu

2010-11-15T23:19:00.004-05:00

So I have FreeNAS running samba shares on my network, for the most part I really don't need to access the data on my actually Linux boxes - only my HTPC.

But I decided I wanted to create mount point on the media folder of my Ubuntu install.

So here is what I had to do in fstab (/etc/fstab)

//freenas_server/sharename /media/localsharedirectory cifs credentials=/home/macleod/smb.credentials,uid=mountuser,gid=mountgroup,iocharset=utf8,codepage=cp437,auto 0 0

My credentials are stored in smb.credentials, like so:

username=myuname
password=mypwd

And I got most of the information from here:
http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/freenas/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2640&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=nfs+ubuntu

Obviously replace mountgroup, mountuser with your ubuntu username and group (group is probably the same as name). Also replace the appropriate shares and credentials - hopefully you get the picture.

UPDATE:
I edited the fstab entry so I now define the iocharset and codepage, this is so foreign characters are displayed correctly in the filesystem, and applications. I noticed the issue due to having display issues in iSub and Subsonic.

UPDATE2:
The DOS Charset should be CP437 - CP850 is missing a few which I needed for foreign language music artists.

Working around chroot jail to allow users to access other directories in my FTP server.

2010-09-27T15:00:00.000-04:00

I was trying to use symbolic links:

ln -s /mnt/Personal/Music /mnt/user/Music

But I needed to add them to the wheel group - which didn't make sense, I tried doing everything relative, instead of absolute - like indicated http://www.proftpd.org/docs/howto/Chroot.html but it didn't work for me. Adding them to wheel basically allowed them to navigate anywhere they wanted.

If anyone has had success using symlinks with their proftpd server, do let me know.

In the end I had to mount a null filesystem

mount_nullfs /mnt/Personal/Music /mnt/user/Music

This basically duplicates the filesystem, any changes made to the dupe will affect the original, so be very careful with your user privilages.

To undo this "link" you can simple umount the dupe

umount /mnt/user/Music

I do not currently know of any ill side effects to this, but I would appreciate any feedback from the guru's out there.

I do have to run these commands every-time the system starts - this is a real drawback - I would love to use symbolic links, but have not been able to work it out.

Learning FreeNAS: Configure and manage a network attached storage solution

Rii Mini

2010-08-23T13:50:00.000-04:00

The Rii mini. I just bought this tiny little keyboard to control my bedroom XBMC HTPC, I am thinking about buying another for the living room - it's perfect. It's back-lit, wireless, rechargeable (lithium-ion). What more could you ask? Seriously, what else do you need?

Comment please!

NAS

2010-07-01T09:21:00.000-04:00

So the other month I bought a ton of new equipment for a new NAS box. The question was, which NAS software to go for? As ever it needed to be free, preferably open-source, and have all the functionality I was looking for.

Webserver
FTP server
SAMBA/CIFS
RSYNC

I wrote about my excitment for OpenMediaVault (OMV) more than a few months back (http://bleedingedgegeek.blogspot.com/2009/12/current-nas-situation.html). However during this wait my current NAS (FreeNAS) began to fail, due to harddrive issues, and the fact that it was a crappy old box.

OMV has yet to be released, so I was in a bit of a pickle, I have new hardware, I need a new NAS, so I began to try my alternatives. I installed and checked out the following NAS solutions:

eBox
Openfiler
Amahi

P.S. There are more, but some of them were ruled out due to hardware limitations, or pricing for several drive solutions (unRAID).

eBox was nice in the fact that it had a built in LDAP server, but I soon realized that it is not something I really need. Openfiler was cool, but I had some issues with my WD EAR drives (advanced 4KB sectors), and I wasn't really a fan of the Volume Management. And Amahi... it sounds good, but the plug and play aspect is a little cluncky/cloogy in my mind.

So in the end, I stuck with FreeNAS! I have implemented encryption on my drives, FreeNAS handles the WD EARS no problem, setup the UPS feature for safe power downs. All in all I am happy with my decision, there is no guarantee that OMV will be in a good shape when it is release, so why take the risk - stick with something I know and love!

Custom Open Source Router Firmware (DD-WRT vs. Tomato)

2010-03-11T10:12:00.002-05:00

I just bought myself the WNR3500L from Netgear, because it ca be flashed with custom firmware - which is great. My old buffalo router could do the same, and I used Tomato.

I decided, new router, new firmware... not such a stunning idea. My immediate issues with DD-WRT over Tomato:

DD-WRT Static DHCP is not as user friendly to set up as it is in Tomato
Upgrading the firmware without resetting all the settings is not advised??? WTF?

Other than these inconveniences I like it, I will update this as I find the time and move forward. I am sure DD-WRT will become more user friendly, but I expected more from it - especially the way everyone rave about it. For now I would tell ppl who are looking into these firmwares to go with Tomato.

Audio file conversion

2010-02-18T19:21:00.004-05:00

So a while back I was looking for an application to convert FLAC to MP3, the solution resulted in Foobar 2000 (http://www.foobar2000.com). Only problem I had with this amazingly fast little tool, was getting my hands on the lame.exe (http://www.free-codecs.com/Lame_Encoder_download.htm) but it only took a little googling to find - and I just gave you the link - so you are good to go

Update:
File Blender is a freeware application that is not only capable of converting audio files such as flac, but also image and other formats. Will be checking this out!

Open VPN

2010-01-27T20:07:00.004-05:00

So I have been thinking a lot about VPN, I want to securely access my home network and VPN is the best way to do that.

As I have mentioned in previous post I use Tomato firmware on my router. This free software allows me to adapt my "$60 router into a $600 router". One of the variants out there for Tomato firmware allows me to run an Open VPN server from the router.

Using this Open VPN version of Tomato firmware I would have the ability to connect securely and become part of my network from anywhere in the world. This got me thinking a little more...

I have a small portable XBMC solution, running on Ubuntu, if I had a VPN server up and running on my router I could configure the VPN client on Ubuntu to securely connect and be part of my network - allowing me to stream my content securely/encrypted anywhere in the world!

OpenVPN: Building and Integrating Virtual Private Networks: Learn how to build secure VPNs using this powerful Open Source application

Port Triggering

2010-01-27T16:26:00.003-05:00

So I am on the search, I need to find a good application for port triggering.

I use uTorrent for getting various content/distributions, however I don't want traffic hitting my router when I am not using the application. To get the best out of uTorrent you need to open a port on your router (port forward), but I don't want that port to be open when my application is not running, so what's the solution - port triggering.

There is an application out there that will work Port Trigger, but it is not supported in Windows 7. The basic idea is that when Port Trigger sees the application of choice (uTorrent) running, it will intermittently send a request to a port. This port request can then be set up at your router to open the configured port for your application connection. Then, when the application is not running Port Trigger no longer 'pings' the trigger port, and the router will not open the port for the application.

If anyone has any suggestions for a Windows 7 supported application, please get in touch!

My router running Tomato firmware:

File Renaming Utilities

2010-01-21T12:53:00.001-05:00

So I used to be a big fan of Lupas Rename 2000 (http://rename.lupasfreeware.org/), but I came across a problem that it could not solve.

I had several files that had characters at the start of the filename that I wanted to move to the end... after some searching I found a utility (free too) that could accomplish my requirement. It's called Bulk Rename Utility (http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk).

This nifty little application allows me to, for example, do the following:

Original filename - "(1937) Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.avi"
New Filename - "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).avi"

This is an example you understand...

The application can be downloaded as an installer, or as a stand alone application - for all you portable pundits out there.

RetroShare

2010-01-14T09:23:00.000-05:00

So, I like P2P for getting my downloads fast, new Linux distributions and such, but what about sharing my content? Most of the content I want to share with my family and friends is private, and I would like to keep it that way, so what are my options? Well, I don't want to use P2P for sharing my files, as that will allow anyone to get hold of it... but I want the security and speed offered via a distributed system. I don't want the hassle of setting up a secure FTP server, mostly because messing with SSH certificates is a bit of a bore. The solution I found, uses the benefits of P2P, and the administration of SFTP - F@F.

F2F is the acronym for a friend to friend network, this solution will allow me to use a P2P network structure, but only invite friends to join in the media sharing. After some looking around I have found RetroShare. This little application is cross-platform, meaning it can be run on Linux, Mac, and Windows - truly allowing any of my friends/family to access and retrieve my data. There are a few options for F2F, but I believe RetroShare to be the only active project with cross-platform support... but if you know different, share the love!

I currently have it running on my Ubuntu HTPC, as it is always on, I have yet to get friends/family set up with their clients, as I want to play with it a little myself.

Boxee

2010-01-12T15:13:00.002-05:00

So I signed up to be notified about the boxee beta, but I never received an email - today I went to check the site out for an update... the beta has been out since the 7th. I have downloaded the deb on my Ubuntu machine and installed it:

sudo dpkg -i "downloaded file name without quotes"

Probably have dependency issues...

sudo apt-get -f install

Worth checking on a few updates...

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Well, obviously I haven't had a chance to check it out, but we will see - I am very interested in the social aspects of the application, but I am loving XBMC with Rapier right now!

Check out boxee for yourself here!

Update:

So I played about with boxee for a short period, the beta is a much needed improvement, but I am not sure if I will switch to it from xbmc!

The current NAS situation...

2009-12-29T14:11:00.002-05:00

Looks like FreeNAS developer is leaving FreeNAS behind due to limitations, and moving to a Linux based system called CoreNAS - which then later changed to OpenMediaVault. Being somewhat excited about an update for future-proofing and allowing major development , I was happy to hear the developer taking steps - however, there could be some time before we see anything.

For all you FreeNAS lovers out there, don't worry, looks like iXsystems is going to take over FreeNAS development.

Myself, I am going to look into Amahi....

If you got the money to fork out - then drobo is your solution:

Bootable USB operating system

2009-12-01T12:33:00.000-05:00

So you want to try a new operating system; but don't want to remove your current one, you don't want to fork out for an expensive partition manager just to make space to try one out.

What you need is a bootable USB with operating system installed. Well UNetbootbin is the solution for you. This little Windows/Linux application will allow you to create a bootable USB from a variey of Linux Distributions, as well as a standard ISO image.

Check the application out here:
http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

REMEMBER: Your BIOS must support booting from USB devices - or this will not work in any way.

iTunes Library Woes

2009-11-24T22:16:00.002-05:00

Ok once again my iTunes Library looked like it had gone south, but I managed to find a way to recover it. The "iTunes Library.xml" file. I always keep a backup of this bad boy, cause he is the one with all the ratings. I think it is probably good practice to back it up once a month or something. Anyway, my "iTunes Library.itl" file was damaged, god only knows how but the simple solution was to import the xml.

When the "iTunes Library.itl" file is corrupted/damaged, iTunes shits the bed and just creates a new empty one. At this point all you do is File | Library | Import Playlist... and then choose the "iTunes Library.xml" file. Immediately it will start restoring all your playlists/rating and other good stuff.

The source of this information was Apple themselves, you think they would make this an option when finding a damaged itl file....

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1451

Update:

I feel that you may have to disable copy music to iTunes library when doing this - otherwise you dupe all your material, that's if you have this feature enabled of course!

Streaming video to anywhere with an internet connection...

2009-11-21T10:56:00.001-05:00

So I put a video in a directory on my webserver for my brother to check out, and I wanted to test if he could download it, so I entered the link to check it. To my surprise it started to stream it in my Firefox browser, it may even do it in IE, but I hate IE/ActiveX so I don't use it. To accomplish this streaming joy all you need to do is get VLC.

http://www.vlc.org

When installing make sure you check Mozilla plugin (if you are a Firefox user, ActiveX for IE users I assume) and then enter the link on your webserver (fll pathname) to the file. After a short time buffering your media should be streaming to your browser. The streaming quality is all dependent on upload speed from your server, and download speed at your location - but in a pinch, you can watch your videos from anywhere.

Obviously we are talking about home movies here, as it would be highly illegal to do this with copyright material - even is you own it. Not only is it illegal, but your ISP may frown on your webserver and upload usage.

Check your ISP limitations before you go doing this sort of thing, you don't want letters through the door, or obscene bills!

Update: I guess you could probably do this to your iPhone too if you have the video in the correct format for it...

Ember Media Manager

2009-11-20T13:02:00.000-05:00

Just came across Ember Media Manager, this looks like your solution for Movie organization problems.

http://code.google.com/p/embermediamanager/

So far I have just had a quick look at this product, but it looks like you just select the folder that contains your movies, and then you can search each file and scrape the media information from online. This basically accomplishes what XBMC does, but will give you an offline solution, a 'backup' incase you ever need to blow away your XBMC video database.

Will have to look into this more, but this seems like a great solution for movie management.

Media Organisation and Tagging

2009-11-19T11:37:00.000-05:00

I love keeping all my media and music organized, whether it is completing music tag information for some OCD sanity or keeping clean file names for scraping purposes (the task or retrieving the information by parsing data from a website).

Now this can be a bit laborious for TV show names/episodes so I searched to find a convenient/efficient way to do this and came up EpNamer. EpNamer scrapes a couple of sites for file information, you just select the files, specify the series name and then search! EpNamer will come back with the suggested names for the various files you queried, show you a preview of the changes that will be made, and if applied it will make those changes. Find out more about this free application here (mac and windows):

http://www.epnamer.com/

Now, for keeping my music tags up to date I like to use the open source solution MusicBrainz, specifically their Picard tagger. MusicBrainz is an open source publicly maintained database of thousands of albums. The Picard tagger comes with a variety of plugins, allowing album art download, original release date tagging, among many other great features. Maintaining music can be hard, but MusicBrainz is there to help, the software has the ability to lookup tracks based on existing tag/filename information as well as PUID (acoustic fingerprints) - therefore that actual audio data content, rather than name/tag. Be sure not to rename the files unless you know what you are doing, as this will mess up your music database if it uses filename, which iTunes and I imagine most others do, for database management. To find out more about MusicBrainz click on the following link:

http://musicbrainz.org/

Album out of this world...

2009-11-18T06:45:00.005-05:00

So The Beatles never broke up, well they did in our universe, but not in the universe one extraordinary chap traveled to.

Besides the outlandish story on the link below, there is a link to one of The Beatles parallel universe releases - an album titled Everyday Chemistry. The title maybe a clue to how this story came about, the use of some everyday chemistry to make hallucinogenic drugs.

Regardless the album is awesome, and I claim it to be the best album of the year - in any universe.

http://thebeatlesneverbrokeup.com/

XBMC

2009-11-16T21:59:00.003-05:00

Well I upgraded to XBMC 9.11 alpha 2. So far I haven't seen any significant reasons to push this update, in fact I see issues to stay where you are.

1. Lirc is a nightmare to get configured for remotes - and I lost all my settings!

2. There seems to be some visual defects in the video playback - which I haven't had the chance to look into.

Anyway, I like to try the latest in case there is something I don't want to miss. I decided to ge rid of XBMC Live on my ION HD HTPC, since it had changed to read only, so no settings were saved. I read somewhere that someone else had this issue - it was caused from changing from VGA to HDMI - physical outputs, not settings - weird huh?!

I did an overall clean house on both my HTPCs, installed the latest Ubuntu and reinstalled XBMC. Apart from the remote and video issues I am really happy - nice spring clean - or should I say fall.

I urge you to check out XBMC if you are looking for a home media playback device. It's cheap and will play anything you throw at it. Plus with the scraping tools it is a good way to keep all media organized... And I stream mine from FreeNAS - more on that later though.