I’ve just built a new PC, and decided to turn my old Windows XP PC into a dedicated, headless Linux server. One thing I’ve always wanted to have a server at home that could run apache and samba, but do other things like download torrents and serve media directly to my XBox 360.

I’m using RHEL5 here, but these instructions should work just as well for CentOS. My media directory is going to be called /media, and I’m doing all this via an xrdp session.

First, you need to install ushare to stream media to your 360:

yum install gcc
yum install libupnp-devel # from EPEL
wget http://ushare.geexbox.org/releases/ushare-1.1a.tar.bz2
tar -xjf ushare-1.1a.tar.bz2
cd ushare-1.1a
CFLAGS="-Os" ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
make install
route add -net 239.0.0.0 netmask 255.0.0.0 eth0
ushare -D -x -c /media

Once you have ushare up and running, your XBox 360 should be able to stream the files in your /media directory.

Now, for downloading torrents I suggest using Wine and uTorrent. I know, it’s not a native Linux app but the fact is the current generation of torrent clients for Linux are mediocre at best. uTorrent is fast, has a tiny footprint, and more features than you can poke a stick at. So until the Linux clients catch up, it’s uTorrent for me.

To install uTorrent on Linux:

yum install wine
wget http://download.utorrent.com/2.0.2/utorrent.exe
wine ./utorrent.exe /NOINSTALL

This should get uTorrent up and running. Next you need to enable the “Web UI” in the configuration settings, and create a username and password for remote access. Choose an arbitrary port like 8123. Once configured you should be able to access your uTorrent GUI remotely via:

http://<yourserver>:8123/gui/

Now, you probably have other PCs and laptops that you want to use to queue up the torrents on your server. That’s where the “Send to WebUI” firefox addon comes in, install this addon to any computer you usually use to browse torrents.

Once you’ve configured it with your server, and username/password, you can queue up torrents as easily as right-click -> “Sent to WebUI”.

If you don’t use firefox don’t worry, you can still queue up torrents via the uTorrent web-interface, it’s just a few extra clicks of the mouse instead of just one.

And that’s it. Queue up your torrents remotely, and watch them on your XBox soon as they have downloaded.

I sent that last post at 1am this morning. This is a screenshot I took of my GMail account activity.

Looks like the hacker was from Italy…

Yep, my gmail account has been hacked.

Please delete any messages you get from me trying to sell you pills (unless it’s Vitamin-C, which is really good for you).

Last year Queensland won 4 series in a row, an unprecedented record. So 5 in a row is not just unprecedented, it’s unbelievable.

Last night’s match was a joy to watch, if you could look past all the ugly wrestling tactics and attempts to put Queensland off their game that is.

And what was going on with the refs? Why wasn’t O’Donnel sent off for this? A spear tackle and a headbutt, and he stayed on the field. In any normal NRL game he’d be off.

In any case, it’s 5 years in a row now and I never get sick of smashing the Blues. Bring on Game 3. Last year NSW beat QLD in game 3 after we’d taken the series… so let’s make it 3-0 this year.