Install MiniDLNA on Ubuntu

Minidlna

There is an updated post describing installation of MiniDLNA on Ubuntu Server (12.04 LTS Precise Pangolin). DLNA allows you to play home network media on all compatible devices over the network. A DLNA server is a streaming video server that can stream content to other networked media players. MiniDLNA is … read more

Fix Atheros AR9287 Wireless Card Problems in Ubuntu?

Ubuntu Wireless Card Problems

I upgraded the wireless card from Atheros AR9285 to Atheros AR9287 which can do 300 Mbps connections. However, I found that the problems in wifi connection: dropped frequently (almost every 30 seconds or so) in Ubuntu. This problem did not occur in Windows 7. So I had a new task … read more

Configure Dynamic DNS Client (ddclient) to Update DynDns and Zoneedit Simultaneously

Dyndns And Zoneedit | Smarthomebeginner

In this post, I will show you how I configured dynamic DNS client (ddclient) on Linux (Ubuntu) to simultaneously update DynDns and Zonedit accounts with multiple hosts. I recently switched my routers. My previous router (Linksys WRT-320N) ran DD-WRT but my current one (ASUS RT-N13U) runs its own firmware, which … read more

Change windows time synchronization interval?

Windows Date And Time | Smarthomebeginner

I recently bought the ASUS U50F-RBBAG05 I3-330M laptop. One of the widespread problems with this model is the random changes in the date. So this got me into looking for ways to get over this issue. A workaround I found was to change the windows time synchronization interval. By default, … read more

Putty shortcut to saved session in Windows

Putty Icon | Smarthomebeginner

PuTTY is a free and open source terminal emulator application which can act as a client for the SSH, Telnet, rlogin, and raw TCP computing protocols and as a serial console client. I have started using Putty to SSH to my server quite often. To make it easier to connect … read more

Reduce hard disk writes in Ubuntu

Hard Disk | Smarthomebeginner

Frequent hard disk write keeps the drive from going to low power mode (especially with the Green drives). Therefore, we need the drive to be inactive for a while to turn on the low power state. In order to do this in Ubuntu Server, the frequency at which things are … read more

Force SSL redirect (https) using .htaccess

Force Ssl Redirect

I wanted to automatically redirect all connections to one of my websites to a secure (https) SSL connection (aka force SSL redirect ) on my Apache server. One very easy way to accomplish this is through the .htaccess file in the root or inside a specific folder (example: https://mydomain.com/membersarea). Below … read more