User Guides How to build a low cost Linux Home Server

superczar · Nov 30, 2007

what happened to tthe images

Switch · Nov 30, 2007

An excellent excellent guide... I am sure you would follow it up with few more tips and tricks

Awesome effort mate as always... I for one was planning to do this @ home but did not do it for n reasons foremost being where to start... Talking a printout of the guide right away

P.S. You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to superczar again.

Vij · Nov 30, 2007

czar....awesome ...awesome....
Not tried it...but still awesome....
Il bookmark/print this and try this one day

ms_mahu · Nov 30, 2007

Excellent guide czar, Thanks

Btw, what software you use for the mp4 conversion under linux, and does it support batch conversion?

200mph · Nov 30, 2007

great guide dude simply great. awesome.

superczar · Nov 30, 2007

Btw, what software you use for the mp4 conversion under linux, and does it support batch conversion?

Here is how I handle batch conversion

(found this script somewhere on the net ..dont rem' where...so cant credit the original author

)

- Install mplayer/mencoder
- Copy the script below to a file and save it under /usr/local/bin by the name mpg2avi
- Do a sudo su then chmod +rx mpg2avi (settting permissions)

- Now coming to the scenario

you are stuck in a traffic jam and realize you forgot to start that all important DivX to mp4 conversion for a bunch of videos

- Take out your symbian phone, putty to xyz.bounceme.net

- navigate to the folder where the files (to be converted) are
- do mpg2avi

The conversions will be done by the time you reach back home (assuming the traffic jam is real bad, and the server config isnt a celeron 500mhz

)

Code:

#!/bin/bash

#mpg2avi (Convert mpeg streams into high quality mpeg4 avi with mp3 audio)

#requirements: mplayer

#Begin
clear

# variables
version=0.2b

current_directory=$( pwd )
# video bitrate (1100 = around 500 MB movie size)
vbitrate=1100

echo -e "* mpg2avi v${version}"

# remove spaces
for i in *.[Mm][Pp][Gg]; do mv "$i" `echo $i | tr ' ' '_'`; done > /dev/null 2>&1 &

# remove uppercase
for i in *.[Mm][Pp][Gg]; do mv "$i" `echo $i | tr '[A-Z]' '[a-z]'`; done > /dev/null 2>&1 &

# convert mpg movies into avi's with mencoder
for i in *.[Mm][Pp][Gg]; do nice -n 10 mencoder $i -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=$vbitrate:vhq:vqmin=2:vlelim=-4:vcelim=9:lumi_mask=0.05:dark_mask=0.01 -vf pp=md  -vop scale=640:480, -oac lavc -lavcopts acodec=mp3:abitrate=128 -o "`basename "$i"`.avi";echo "Conversion done";done

exit;

if you need multiple profiles, you can always edit the params in the last line of the script to your liking ...create multiple versions of this script and save them as e.g. mpg2avi-hi, mpg2avi-mid mpg2avi-low etc.

montylee · Nov 30, 2007

awesome, excellent and to-the-point guide dude! The images aren't visible though.

One suggestion: you haven't mentioned the usage of torrentflux to download torrent files. You can add a small example usage of the actual downloading process. For e.g. suppose i am sitting away from my home and i want to initiate a download, how will i do it? and can i use this to download normal files in addition to torrents.

stalker · Nov 30, 2007

Awesomeness...

superb guide SuperC!

ms_mahu · Nov 30, 2007

thanks again for the steps for mp4 conversion. Is that the setting you use for converting videos for iphone use (640:480)? would it preserve the orginal aspect ratio ?

Also, how much time it takes to covert a 1GB file on your setup?

superczar · Nov 30, 2007

One suggestion: you haven't mentioned the usage of torrentflux to download torrent files. You can add a small example usage of the actual downloading process. For e.g. suppose i am sitting away from my home and i want to initiate a download, how will i do it? and can i use this to download normal files in addition to torrents.

here you go

Now there is no point me trying to explain how to configure and use Torrentflux-b4rt. The site forums have a fairly detailed faq.

anyway, here is a basic guide:
open xyz.bounceme.net in a browser
navigate to the torrentflux link
Login
Now using the webpage (see screenshot above), either upload a torrentfile from the machine you are sitting on or use the search box to look for torrents via the selected tracker
Click start , and you are all set

One basic thing I missed in the guide is to add a port like 10010 to the forwarded ports list and configure torrentflux to use that port for downloading...without that, even though torrents would work but not optimally