Using the Raspberry Pi as a Web Server Media Server and Torrent Box

So youve set your Raspberry Pi up.
If not you might want to check out this page first.
So now you want to set your Raspberry Pi up as a media/web/everything else server.

Before any of these, make sure your raspberry pi ip address is static. You can set this by opening up a terminal and typing in:
sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

(Feel free to use gedit or vim or whatever you want. I like vim)
You should now be looking at a file. Change the line:
iface eth0 inet dhcp
To:
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.10
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.1.254

where the gateway is your router and the address is the ip address you want. Save the file and reboot (sudo reboot) and now your ip should be static.

Luckily, SSH is already enabled on the Raspbian image so we wont go into that. However, if you want to SSH externally, you should install something like SSHGuard for protection and then in your router config redirect port 22 traffic to your Raspberry Pi.

Section 1: Webserver

Installing apache is easy. Just open a terminal and type:
sudo apt-get install apache2

This will set up a webserver for you with the files at /var/www being your web directory. Modify those files how you feel like and if you want to make it publicly accessible then configure your router to forward port 80 to your raspberry pis ip address.

Section 2: VNC

This is an optional thing since you can port X over SSH. But if you want vnc. All you have to do is open up a terminal and type:
sudo apt-get install tightvncserver

When it is finished installing it should ask for a password. If it doesnt or you need to change it. Just type vncpasswd to reset it.
Then type tightvncserver and a new instance will start. You can kill it by typing tightvncserver -kill :1

To use this externally, you will have to open up port 5801 (for the first instance, 5802 for the second, etc.)

Section 3: Media Server

Start off by mounting all of your external HDDs. If you have a Raid array that is great, if not, I have a handy little hack for you.
edit fstab by opening up a terminal and typing:
sudo nano /etc/fstab
Add each hard drive to the file, mine looks like this:
/dev/sda1 /media/Kingsley ntfs-3g defaults 0 0
/dev/sdb1 /media/HarvardMulligan ntfs-3g defaults 0 0
/dev/sdc1 /media/Moloch ntfs-3g defaults 0 0

(Make sure the folders in /media exist and their permissions are set properly with chmod, otherwise this wont work)

You really should set up a RAID array or something, but lets say you like to live by the seat of your pants and dont care if one of your HDDs fail and you want to access them all at the same time in one convenient directory. To do this you can use mhddfs. Install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install mhddfs

When its done installing, open fstab back up and after the lines with your HDD, type in something like what is shown below:
mhddfs#/media/Kingsley,/media/HarvardMulligan,/media/Moloch /media/ALLOFIT fuse defaults,allow_other 0 0

So my final fstab file has this at the bottom:
/dev/sda1 /media/Kingsley ntfs-3g defaults 0 0
/dev/sdb1 /media/HarvardMulligan ntfs-3g defaults 0 0
/dev/sdc1 /media/Moloch ntfs-3g defaults 0 0
mhddfs#/media/Kingsley,/media/HarvardMulligan,/media/Moloch /media/ALLOFIT fuse defaults,allow_other 0 0




where mhddfs mounts all of the drives to /media/ALLOFIT (which I previously created and set permissions for) and I can write to that and mhddfs will figure out where to put it for me.
Now just sudo reboot

Interesting tidbit: You can use sshfs (their is a Windows version call win-sshfs) to access these drives securely through ssh. This way you dont have to worry about Samba and you can access these files graphically using the internet.

Section 4: Torrent Box

So now you want to be able to torrent (lets assume completely legally) things directly to your server/external HDDs.
Simply install transmission by opening up a terminal and typing
sudo apt-get install transmission-daemon

Now we need to edit some settings, stop the daemon and open up the settings file by typing:
sudo service transmission-daemon stop
and
sudo nano /etc/transmission-daemon/settings.json

You will need to change a couple of settings.
Change your download directory to where you want your downloads, I use my external HDDs:  "download-dir": "/media/ALLOFIT",
Now to set up some security. Change the following text requires the ""s but numbers and true/false dont:
"rpc-authentication-required": true,
"rpc-enabled": true,
"rpc-password": "YourPasswordHere",
"rpc-port": 6669,
"rpc-username": "YourUserNameHere",

You can change the port to anything but its probably a good idea to change it from the default to avoid brute force script kiddies.
Now start the daemon back up by typing
sudo service transmission-daemon start

Now open up a webbrowser on any computer in your network and type in your raspberry pis ip address followed by :port. Ex: 192.168.1.10:6691
If you want to access this externally, just forward the port you chose to your raspberry pi ip address in your router config.

Now you are done.

To use transmission to its fullest potential and automatically download media:
http://stevenhickson.blogspot.com/2013/03/automatically-downloading-torrents-with.html


Check out my other Raspberry Pi Fixes/How tos:
http://stevenhickson.blogspot.com/2012/08/setting-up-omxplayer-gui-on-raspberry-pi.html
http://stevenhickson.blogspot.com/2012/10/fixing-raspberry-pi-crashes.html

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Googler Moti Yung elected as 2013 ACM Fellow

Posted by Alfred Spector, VP of Engineering

Yesterday, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) released the list of those who have been elected ACM Fellows in 2013. I am excited to announce that Google Research Scientist Moti Yung is among the distinguished individuals receiving this honor.

Moti was chosen for his contributions to computer science and cryptography that have provided fundamental knowledge to the field of computing security. We are proud of the breadth and depth of his contributions, and believe they serve as motivation for computer scientists worldwide.

On behalf of Google, I congratulate our colleague, who joins the 17 ACM Fellow and other professional society awardees at Google, in exemplifying our extraordinarily talented people. You can read a more detailed summary of Moti’s accomplishments below, including the official citations from ACM.

Dr. Moti Yung: Research Scientist
For contributions to cryptography and its use in security and privacy of systems

Moti has made key contributions to several areas of cryptography including (but not limited to!) secure group communication, digital signatures, traitor tracing, threshold cryptosystems and zero knowledge proofs. Motis work often seeds a new area in theoretical cryptography as well as finding applications broadly. For example, in 1992, Moti co-developed a protocol by which users can commonly compute a group key using their own private information that is secure against coalitions of rogue users. This work led to the growth of the broadcast encryption research area and has applications to pay-tv, network communication and sensor networks.
Moti is also a long-time leader of the security and privacy research communities, having mentored many of the leading researchers in the field, and serving on numerous program committees. A prolific author, Moti routinely publishes 10+ papers a year, and has been a key contributor to principled and consistent anonymization practices and data protection at Google.

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The Internet Is Failing The Website Preservation Test

I blogged a few months back about the increasing problem of dead links (known as link rot) on research web sites. Not surprisingly this problem is not isolated to academic websites. An article by Rob Miller in TechChrunch, called "The Internet Is Failing The Website Preservation Test," makes the case for a a digital Library of Congress to preserve and protect all of the content on the internet to counter this growing problem. Preserving the integrity of the web for posterity cannot he (and others) argue be left to content publishers or non-profits like the Internet Archives Wayback Machine or the British Librarys UK Web Archive. The web is such a vital information source to us all know it must be preserved for future historians.

from The Universal Machine http://universal-machine.blogspot.com/

Put the internet to work for you.

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Beyond Touch using everyday tools as input devices

This Thursdays Gibbons lecture titled Beyond Touch: using everyday tools as input devices is by Dr Beryl Plimmer of the Department of Computer Science at The University of Auckland. The lecture is this Thursday the 7th at 6:00pm for a 6:30pm start. Click the lecture link for full venue details and if you cant attend the lecture will be streamed live and after the event.

from The Universal Machine http://universal-machine.blogspot.com/

Put the internet to work for you.

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Use your mobile phone as webcam warelex S60 application

Turn your Symbian smartphone into a high-quality web camera and throw out your bulky USB webcam. Very simple to install and configure, Mobiola Web Camera consists of two software components: 1) a client application that resides on the phone, and 2) a webcam PC driver compatible with any Windows application that can receive video feeds from a web camera including Skype, Yahoo, MSN, AOL IM, ICQ messangers, www.YouTube.com, www.MySpace.com and www.grouper.com. Carry your webcam with you wherever you go and connect it to your laptop at anytime.

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