Setting up VLC http interface

Using VLC 1.0.6 (Goldeneye) and Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

Tools -> Preferences (Show settings: All) -> Interface -> Main interface -> Extra interface modules: check "HTTP remote control interface"

Restart VLC and controls should be available at http://127.0.0.1:8080 on the local machine.

To enable control from remote (but still network-local) machines, edit /usr/share/vlc/http/.hosts (note: editing /usr/share/vlc/lua/http/.hosts did not work!)

Update: Updated to Ubuntu 12.04.1 (precise) and VLC 2.0.3 Twoflower and now the hosts file is at /usr/share/vlc/lua/http/.hosts

Notes on .hosts file format:
To get enable access from non-local machines, I uncommented this line in the .hosts file:

192.168.0.0/16

According to this guy, it is "equivalent to the IP range 192.168.0.0 thru 192.168.255.255"

Update (2015-11-10): Set up web remote for VLC (v2.2.1) for Windows 7. Followed the instructions here.

Differences:

On Windows 7 (vlc 2.2.1), the check box is labeled "web" (not "HTTP remote control interface"). 

Also, you must enter a password at Tools -> Preferences (Show settings: All) -> Interface -> Main interfaces -> Lua: Password. The password used by the vlc remote app is "vlcremote". 

I did not have to edit a .hosts file for the Windows version of vlc.

installing a new video card (upgrading from integrated video)

In the BIOS, in the northbridge configuration, switched video from IGD (internal graphics device) to PEG/IGD (PEG = PCI Express Graphics). Other option was PCI.

Ubuntu seemed to auto detect things after that. The desktop didnt quite fit on the screen but changing my Samsung tv to "Just Scan" seemed to fix things.

XFX PV-T96O-YHFC GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150570

Build Transmission from source

http://trac.transmissionbt.com/wiki/Building

On Unix

Prerequisites

Ubuntu users: The packages you need are: build-essential automake autoconf libtool pkg-config libcurl4-openssl-dev intltool libxml2-dev libgtk2.0-dev libnotify-dev libglib2.0-dev. After you install those you can skip this section.

If this is your first time compiling on Unix, you'll need a few basic tools:

• gcc
• libtool
• gettext 0.14.1 or newer
• intltool 0.23 or newer

If you're planning to build from SVN:

• automake 1.9 or newer
• autoconf 2.54 or newer

Once you've got the basics out of the way, here are the libraries that Transmission needs to have in order to build:

• OpenSSL 0.9.8 or newer, preferably ssl or gnutls support.
• libcurl 7.16.3 or newer
• GTK+ 2.6 or newer (only needed by the GTK+ gui)
• libnotify 0.4.4 (optional, and only needed by the GTK+ gui)
• DBUS 0.70 (optional, and only needed by the GTK+ gui)

RPM users: you'll also need to install the corresponding -devel packages.

Building from a tarball

$ tar xvjf transmission-1.40.tar.bz2
$ cd transmission-1.40
$ ./configure -q && make -s
$ su (if necessary for the next line)
$ make install

Associate magnet links with Transmission in Firefox

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=308130
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Register_protocol#Linux_and_Mac

1) Type about:config into the address bar and press Enter.
* Right-click -> New -> Boolean -> Name: network.protocol-handler.external.magnet -> Value -> true
* Right-click -> New -> String -> Name: network.protocol-handler.app.magnet -> Value -> /usr/local/bin/transmission
* Ensure network.protocol-handler.expose-all is set to true

edit: Turns out Transmission supports DHT but not magnet links yet. Maybe Transmission 1.8 will.

Installing Windows fonts in ubuntu (Arial, Verdana, etc)

sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts

How to execute a sudo command in a script

The -S option for sudo makes sudo read the password from stdin instead of prompting. So it would look something like:

echo 'password' | sudo -S thecmd


Another option is to modify /etc/sudoers to specify NOPASSWD for certain users. Edit /etc/sudoeres with visudo. Then add the line

username ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

where username is the user to set.

How to copy files from a samba share from the command line

1) Mount the samba share. The command will look something like:

sudo mount -t cifs //servername/dir /home/username/mountdir -o password=password user=username

The -t option specifies the filesystem (cifs = samba). The servername/dir is the remote directory to mount and the /home/username is the local directory to mount to.

Note: smbfs needs to be installed for this to work: sudo apt-get smbfs

To learn more options, read man mount.cifs.

2) Copy files.

3) Unmount samba share:

sudo umount /home/username/mountdir