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I want my Ubuntu media server to be able to push content to my WD TV Live, which I use to view content on my TV. My WD TV Live is on my wireless network, but I found that the network is not fast or reliable enough to stream 1080p content, or even 720p content [...]

For simplicity, I tend to stream from my media server to my TVs and computers using Samba shares. Samba shares implement the standard CIFS file-sharing protocol, are accessible from every major operating system, and work just fine with most media front-ends (for example: XBMC, Boxee, Windows Media Center, and my WD TV LIVE set-top box).
Create [...]

My media server runs headless, so I need a way to log into it from other machines for remote administration. Telnet is installed by default on Ubuntu Server, but it does not offer a secure, encrypted channel to the server, even when transferring the password. SSH, on the other hand, offers all the features of [...]

A server should have a static IP address, so you can always find it on the network. Ubuntu Server uses DHCP out of the box, unless you set a static IP address using the installer. To change from a dynamic to a static IP address, follow the instructions below, which apply to Ubuntu Server 10.04 Lucid [...]

Because I fried my server’s hard drive, I had to reinstall Ubuntu Lucid Server. Of course I didn’t have a Lucid Server disc, and, because physical media is dead to me, I didn’t have any blank CDs to burn. I don’t have any spare thumb drives, either. Therefore, I couldn’t install Lucid server. Instead, I [...]

I have a Fit-PC Slim, which I use as a media back-end server on my home network. Because a Fit-PC Slim has only a 500 MHz processor and 512 MB of RAM, it is too underpowered to be a media transcoder or recorder. Therefore, I mostly use it as a file server and a torrent [...]

If you have a large external hard drive that you wish to share between your Mac and Windows machines, you’ll find yourself in a dilemma: Windows offers no support for Mac-formatted (HPFS+) drives, while Mac OS X, out of the box, offers only read-only support for NTFS, the default file system for Windows XP and beyond. Mac [...]

Sapphire 1.0.0, a superlative custom ROM for the Motorola Droid, was just released. You can upgrade to it via ROM Manager using the steps I previously wrote. Just substitute build 1.0.0 for 0.8.4. You still have to downgrade to ClockworkMod 2.0.1.3 to update using ROM Manager (i.e. ClockworkMod 2.5.0.1. won’t reboot your phone when installing this [...]

For the past several months, I have been a huge fan of running CyanogenMod (CM5, mostly) on my rooted Motorola Droid. Unfortunately, the ROM’s latest incarnations (CM6 RC1 and RC2)—which correspond to its move to the Froyo source code base—have not run stably on my phone. Despite my efforts to fix the problems (reflashing, wiping [...]

This is definitely a newb-level topic, but I think it is important to understand how to redirect output from your command-line processes. This becomes important because regularly-schedule processes run via cron will email you whatever the output is. This is completely confusing when you first encounter it, and the complete solution isn’t exactly obvious.
StdOut
When you [...]