Access your home files from anywhere via browser and webdav (https) disk

This weekend I fiddled with enabling access to my home fileserver. I already can access it via RDP (Windows7) and FreeNX (fastest, recommended remote access with Ubuntu/Linux). I also manage my torrents with uTorrent's webUI. Files are accessible on home network via Windows files sharing (SMB on Windows/Samba on Linux).

My goal for the weekend was to enable remote access to files from anywhere on internet, under both Windows and Linux, with secure password protection.  For this purpose, I use webdav sharing with SSL (self-signed certificate) on my server. It can be raised on Apache2 (free on both Windows and Linux) and on IIS (free from Microsoft only on Windows).

Choosing server
I killed couple of hours raising apache2 on Ubuntu, but ultimately failed forcing it to use SSL. (meh, will try later) and then I tried apache2 on Windows - and this is utterly pervert feeling to configure it in CLI on Windows. Will try to avoid at any cost in the future. Luckily, there is free web server from Microsoft, IIS 7. It probably has some limits that would make it unsuitable for large website hosting, but it is perfectly Ok for my purposes. So, I installed IIS7 and enabled WebDAV.

IIS7/WebDAV Configuration (sorry, this is not a full manual explaining where to click each time, rather a milestone walkthrough for me or someone already familiar with IIS7 interface. I am saving it here, to read again should I ever need to repeat this procedure)

First, create self signed certificate. Add it to default websiite.
Bind website to your own domain. I do not have fixed IP, so I use dynamic dns service for dns resolution. So, I bind default website in IIS to my dynamic dns: solnyshok.dyndns.info
Then limit protocols to SSL (port 443).
Authorization method = application passthrough.
Enable WebDav module.
Enable Basic Authetication.
Enable Authorization for specific user.
Enable SSL = required
Create Authoring Rule for WebDav (* allow for all users)
Enable "Directory browsing" if you want to browse your folders in your web browser. This is not related to WebDAV, but rather is an additional extra, for getting access to your files on any computer wherever you are, with just a browser and a password.
Add virtual directory (directories) pointing to the folder (NOT DRIVE!!!) that you want to share. Check that authentication setting, authoring rules, filtering, directory browsing, ssl setting have been inherited.

Notes to myself
1. User "Network Service" and "IIS*" should have access to the destination folders or it fails to access it.
2. Drive root (at least on my Windows 7 system) contains protected system folders that IIS will fail to open, resulting in failure to show content of the root of the drive. (so, https://mywebsite.com/drive1tb fails to open, but https://mywebsite.com/drive1tb/subfolder opens ok)
3. If you want to be able to access certain files that are not listed in the MIME-types module, you can't. Need to add to MIME type list first.

Accessing remote WebDAV drive on
To connect to webdav shares on needs to map network drive in windows (https://solnyshok.dyndns.info) or connect to network share with SecureWebDav (davs://solnyshok.dyndns.info) in Ubuntu (9.10, Karmic Koala beta). You will be asked  username/password on first access. Update: I have run into problems with Windows, seems that Windows7 network drive mapper prevents connection to a server with self-signed certificate, and there is no way to override this behaviour. :(

And here is how it looks in web browser (if Directory Browsing module is enabled).


Technorati Tags: iis 7, Ubuntu, Windows, webdav, https, apache

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i8910 as real Samsung flagship in 2009

Today comes confirmation from Eldar Murtazin (russian language), the mobile industry analyst and avid phone reviewer, that sales of Samsung Omnia HD i8910 have overtaken sales of Nokia N97 in Russia. Despite the fact that N97’s advertising budget is 3 mUSD and Omnia’s only 300 kUSD.

More than ever, I am happy with my choice of the phone this year. i8910 is good.

Custom ROMs for symbian devices?

 

As far as I knowб this is the first custom ROM (similarly to custom ROMs for WinMo devices, made popular by xda-developers) for Symbian phones. This one is adaptation of HK Rom for Italian languages, plus some customizations, and Kastor effects enabled out of the box.

Btw, I have Omnia HD i8910 since middle of July, enjoy its speed and capacious RAM. New firmwares are coming out of Samsung soon to enable 3d task manager and to fix some bugs. This thing rocks. I also hope to see it updated to Symbian^2 next year. We’ll see. :)

How to download youtube video to S60 phone

(tested on Nokia N82)

How to download youtube video to your S60 phone?

I recently was presented with the challenge – I’ve received link to an interesting music video in twitter (I use and recommend Gravity). I could watch it using Operamini or native S60 browser, but downloading it to my phone was a pain. Commonly used sites (like ssyoutube.com, or youtubemp4.com) that help desktop users to download youtube clips, failed to work properly in the phone browsers (and I tried native browser, operamini, o3zone). Sometime they used ajax to show links, sometime they asked you to right click on the link to save file (how the hell can one do this on non-touch Nokia?) The only way that I found to ahieve the desired result, was to use keepvid.com which present simple download links in the resulting page.

If you already know ID of the video that you want to download, then it is pretty easy task, just form the following address in your favourite browser http://keepvid.com/?url=http://youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID follow it, and press on of the download links (.flv or .mp4). If, you want to get HQ quality, add &fmt=18 to the end of the url.

Now the 2nd obstacle is to get ID of the specific video from tinyurl (or any other link compressor, I guess). If you open tinyurl in your browser, it goes to mobile youtube page. Save bookmark at this moment and open it for editing. Surprisingly, I could not open bookmark address for editing in operamini (probably a bug related to very long address). But it works in the native browser, where you can see VideoID at the end of the address (the XXXXXXX after v= ). Copy it.

Now you can form download url as discussed above, adding to VideoID to

http://keepvid.com/?url=http://youtube.com/watch?v=

You also can save this address among bookmarks for easier use next time.

Now, I am looking for a way to extract audio track from .mp4 video on my phone and making a ringtone out of it. :)

Virtual Box 3.0 Beta has DirectX9 support

But fails Windows Performance Index, so no Aero yet. Google Earth hangs too. :(

Problem installing Nokia Maps 3 on N82

I was getting error message from Nokia Map Updater, that compatible phone is not found, until I tried to run old version of Nokia Maps (2.x which comes in v31 of firmware) for the first time. After it has started and created some registry settings and own files on the phone, Nokia Map Updater immediately found my handset and proceeded with installation of Nokia Maps 3.

OS X on Asus Eee PC 1000H

From my archive.

Technorati Tags: os x,eeepc 1000h

Windows 7 x64 Ramdisk

Since the beginning of times, I speed up Firefox on all my computers by putting its cache on a ramdisk. Only recently I started to use Windows x64 and faced with the problem that it is impossible to start any free ramdisk under W7 x64. Luckily, there was a solution on on sevenforums.

Download the Ramdisk from
CENATEK: High Speed Storage Systems
Select the 1st one on the top (Public Beta V.3.5.107) and save the msi file to c:\
Don't start the MSI, it will not work.
Decompress the MSI-File (Start/Run CMD as Administrator):
msiexec /a Dataram_RAMDisk_v3.5.107.msi /qn TARGETDIR=C:\Driver

Since we have no "add hardware" in control panel, we have to install this driver manually.
The Hardware-Wizard still exist.
Start/Search -> hdwwiz.exe
- Button "next"
- select "hardware manually (expert)"
- Button "next"

- select "All Devices"
- Button "next"
Now you have to search for the Button "have disk". Click on this button and search for the folder
C:\Driver\Program Files(x86)\Ramdisk

select RAMDiskVE.inf
- Button "OK"
- Button "next"
- Button "next"
To Configure the Ramdisk start the program
C:\Driver\Program Files(x86)\RamdiskVE.exe

For me (solnyshok) RamdiskVE reports failure to start ramdisk, but after rebooting the computer, ramdisk with the required parameters is there. So, don’t panic if you get this error.

The 2nd part is easy and described in detail here. Requires creating a string browser.cache.disk.parent_directory containing the path to new cache location.

Technorati Tags: Windows 7,x64,ramdisk,dataram,firefox,cache

CoLinux Ubuntu 9.04

Yesterday I played with CoLinux on my laptop with Vista x32. Tried it first with Windows 7 x64 but turns out that CoLinux is only available for x32 bit environments. Anyway, it started find with Vista x32 and I even upgraded the original image (Ubuntu 8.04) in two steps to 8.10 and then to 9.4. Had to increase image size from 1.7GB to 8GB. Increasing image size involves creating a new empty image file under windows, then mounting it under CoLinux and copying all information to it, quitting CoLinux and restarting with new image file. Instructions are in the Colinux FAQ section. Maybe 8GB is an overkill, and 4GB would have been enough, but I made it bigger just in case I will want to install more programs.

It works great, faster than virtual machine. Internet works, but I still have to figure out how to see local network.

Dual core Atom based home server

Here we go, the small box based on Dual Core Atom 330 with total consumption around 50W replacing a 150W old Pentium 4 tower. It used to be around 35C in my wardrobe, now we are back to silent operation and normal room temperature. As I mentioned before, I have there 1TB 3.5” drive mostly idle 95% of the time and 500GB 2.5” laptop hard drive for 24*7 torrents.

And I am using W7 x64 build 7100 (RC) with it. I tried Home Server 2008 R2, Ubuntu 904, FreeNAS. I believe that W7 beta is so far the best value proposition, as it is very stable, versatile and free till the June, 2010.