to access the Firefox Configuration area, type this into your address box and hit enter...

about:config

If you completely screw things up you can reset to the defaults by...

• Start Firefox in Safe Mode
• Check the Reset to Defaults box
• Click the Make Changes and Restart button

One of the beauty's about the Slingbox is it's ability to stream video around your WIFI network, and more potentially accessing it remotely via some router changes.

Router Settings

So, first off log into your router with your internet browser...

http://192.168.1.1

Enter your admin username + password and get into the system.

Now first off you need to put the Slingbox into the DMZ (demilitarized zone), basically in front of the firewall so that you can connect to it remotely in cyberspace.

So with a belkin router, click [firewall], then [dmz]

Now add a static ip entry for your slingbox, like...

public ip : 82.23.44.92
static ip : 192.168.1.237

So in the first line of the DMZ screen it will show your router's currently assigned IP address, on the right it will list static ip's assigned to devices within your network that you want out in the open.

Because the Slingbox uses the default IP of 192.168.1.237, we set the first line to : 192.168.1.237 or 237

Hit save, now you need to setup a port for the slingbox.

So click [firewall], then [virtual servers]

Now add an entry for your slingbox's internal port.

lan ip address: 192.168.1.237
protocol type: TCP
lan port: 5001
public port: 5001
enable: tick this

make sure the entries are correct and you've ticked [enable], click [set] and you're done!

Your Slingbox is now available online.

So open your slingbox software, click [get info] and tick [access remotely], enter your router's ip address (from the DMZ screen, public ip or in this case 82.23.44.92) and the port 5001, click [save] and sit back and watch TV from your slingbox anywhere in the world.

Further Note

You can also apply this to other devices such as if you are like me and buy an ICYBOX NAS enclosure with a BitTorrent tool in it, by putting it in the DMZ it then has free access to the internet and you can load up torrent files into it and leave it to download them for you.

Nothing illegal mind, for me it's Fedora 9.

;-)

Take care,

Another little mini article on automating file remote file transfers with RSYNC + SSH.

RSYNC

RSYNC is a Linux tool that allows you to copy all the files from the source to the destination, but copies only the one's which have changed between them; limiting the data you have to send rather than doing a blanket copy all.

SSH

SSH is a tool that allows you to gain remote access to a server from your computer.

RSYNC + SSH

Put these two together and you'll be able to copy files from your pc to a remote box as seemlessly as you do a COPY * from the command prompt.

Creating the Keyfile

First off it's good to stick your .SSH keys in the .SSH directory rather than all over the place so type...

CD .SSH

...From the terminal to navigate to your .SSH directory.

Now type...

ssh-keygen -d

This will generate a stronger SSH key. When asked for the name of your key type 'STORAGE' as we'll use this to backup our files to somewhere else. Don't enter a password if you want it to not prompt you for one everytime you do a transfer.

Two files will be created, a private key, and a public .pub public key. These will be both binded to your PC and wherever you upload the public key file you will have access to from your PC.

Copy to your Remote Box

Now use WinSCP, TRANSMIT or some FTP tool to access your remote box and create a .SSH directory in it's root.

Create a text file called 'authorized_keys' with no extension and copy-n-paste the contents of your .ssh/storage.pub file into this text file on your remote box and save it.

Now you will have access to the remote box from your PC.

The RSYNC Command

Now to copy files from your PC to the remote box type this complex RSYNC command...

rsync -azvCL --exclude=.DS_Store --progress -e "ssh -i .ssh/storage" * user@mybox.com:/home/backup/

Let's break this down...

• -azvCL, this tells RSYNC to compress the data across the connection if it can so if your sending 22mb of text data it'll take less time; plus it'll recursively copy all the files and directories you choose.

• --exclude, defines what files to exclude in the transfer, for this i'm on a MAC box and I want to exclude the file thumbnails OSX creates.

• --progress, tells rsync to show us interactively the progress of our transfers.

• *-e*, is the important bit, this tells rsync to use SSH and where the keyfiles are located.

• Replace USER with the username for your remote box, and storage.com with the domain name or IP address of your remote box.

• :/home/backup/ tells RSYNC to copy the files to the backup directory located in the base of your remote box.

The beauty with RSYNC over FTP is that if the transmission breaks half-way it won't copy the file, so you won't be left with half of a file on your remote server thinking it's the full copy; and with all these options enabled it's hellishly quicker.

P.S. Use Markdown + SmartyPants for semantically correct XHTML.

Enjoy!