Accessing your home computer (I’ll call it server on this article) from a remote location (that I’ll call client) outside the local network, can be very interesting, for example, listening to streaming music played by MPD, managing downloads in the bittorrent client Transmission through its web interface, controlling the machine via SSH … However, before accessing your server remotely, you must know the “address” or IP (Internet Protocol address), but generally at home they are provided dynamically, through the Internet Service Provider, so it’s not so easy to know the IP of your home server.
We will see how to automatically update the DNS name on a domain name server (DynDNS) with the current IP address of the server thanks to ddclient.

Domain Name

We’ll start by creating a “domain name” with one of the services supported by ddclient, namely DynDNS that allows you to create two free “hostnames”.

First, you can enter the name of the subdomain you want and select the desired main domain. So you get an address such as hometest.dyndns.org

Regarding the desired service, it is a Host with IP address. In the IP Address field, just logically click on the link below, which shows your address, provided that you do this operation from the station you want to make accessible from outside. You can proceed to the next step by clicking on the Add To Cart button that sends you to a registration form. Once you have registered and validation of your domain, you should be able to connect to your server from a client machine (via your browser) to the address you have chosen in our example hometest.dyndns.org.

However, the IP address of your server changes on a regular basis and it is therefore necessary to update, at each change, our DynDNS profile. This is where the role of ddclient comes.

Installing and configuring ddclient:

We’ll install ddclient on the server. On Ubuntu, the installation is done by running the following command:

sudo apt-get install ddclient

During installation, you have to configure the ddclient through multiple “screens” where you can just confirm by pressing the Enter key and use the Space key to select an option from a list of choices.

In the first screen, choose www.dyndns.com, then set the identifier and the password. After that it will ask whether to search the IP with checkup.dyndns.com, say No. Then choose your active network interface (if you are not sure, type ifconfig in a terminal to figure it out). Then Choose “From a list” and your “hostname” will appear, select it and proceed to the next screen. Say No for Launching ddclient during PPP connection, then choose yes to start ddclient as daemon. This is the option that allows you to automate the updating of the IP address in your DynDNS profile: the ddclient service is launched at server startup and runs at regular intervals, which we are going to configure in the last screen. Choose an interval like 3m (three minutes), 2h (two hours) or 1d (one day).

If you need to return later to configure ddclient and want to benefit from this “assistant”, simply run the command:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure ddclient

You can also change the configuration of ddclient directly by editing the /etc/ddclient.conf and add options, for more details refer to the documentation (http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/ddclient/wiki/Usage)

Please note that to access the services running on your server, you need to forward ports in the configuration space of your box/router though.

Conclusion:

Now that you have configured you server, you can use it in several purposes such as SSH access or bittorrent web-client “Transmission” remote control.

To this list I’ve added a D-Link Wireless N 150 usb adapeter ( DWA-125 ), the piece of … hardware that has given more problens in the setup, but now it’s up and running too, in my next post a small guide on how to make it works on Linux.

As a new thing for my desktop and as anticipated by title I’ve decided to move from Ubuntu to Mint, staying on the XFCE edition.
On my desktop I’ve always used .deb distributions, and so after Debian and Ubuntu it’s now time to test Mint, I’ve heard a lot of praise on it and so i want to test it on first hand after 2 years and half of Ubuntu, to be honest this decision has been taken also after some “commercial” choices of Canonical for their next release and Unity a DE that I’ve never liked, i prefer much more Cinnamon, that i use on my Laptop with gentoo.



Mint is also a good choice for me because it’s fully compatible with Ubuntu and so I’ll be able to test software and write guides for Ubuntu/Mint, but when is Mint born and what’s its history ?
Wikipedia on the rescue for this:

Linux Mint started in 2006 with a beta release called 1.0 “Ada”. The project wasn’t well known at the time and this version was never released as stable. With the release of 2.0 “Barbara” a few months later, the distribution caught the attention of many people within the Linux community and started to build an audience. Using the feedback given from its new community, the distribution released a quick succession of releases between 2006 and 2008. 5 versions were released as follows: 2.1 “Bea”, 2.2 “Bianca”, 3.0 “Cassandra”, 3.1 “Celena” and 4.0 “Daryna”.

In 2008, Linux Mint adopted the same release cycle as Ubuntu and dropped its minor version number before releasing version 5 “Elyssa”. The same year, in an effort to increase the compatibility between the two systems, Linux Mint decided to abandon its code-base and changed the way it built its releases. Starting with version 6 “Felicia” each release was now completely based on the latest Ubuntu release, built directly from it, timed for approximately one month after the corresponding Ubuntu release (i.e. usually in May and November).

So how it’s been the installation and first setup of Mint 13 Maya for me ?

Installation and first boot

Like many modern distribution the installation of Mint 13 start from a live CD, in my case I’ve used a USB stick but this doesn’t make any difference for the final result.
The installation with the wizard runs smoothly and after the usual question about language and disk partitioning the installation process started, the only thing that I found different is the possibility to have btrfs file systems, i don’t remember if Ubuntu 12.04 has this option, the whole installation process took less than 5 minutes, amazing.

In the first boot the wireless was not working so I connected a cross-cable to my old Ubuntu and I configured it as gateway, in this way I updated all the packages (more than 400), this required much more time than the installation.

Another thing done during the first boot has been add the proprietary (not open) driver for the Video card, in Mint you just have to go in settings -> additional drivers, it will do a scan and it will propose for you additional drivers, for my PC I’ve installed FGLRX graphic driver for ATI/AMD video cards.

Once everything was correctly updated and the new video driver installed I’ve rebooted the system and this is how my desktop looks like after some small customization :

This output is displayed at 1920×1080 from the VGA adapter of the Sapphire, it looks very clean and polish, and in the next days I’ll switch to the DVI interface, that should further improve the output.

Differences between Mint and Ubuntu

Perhaps it’s too soon to tell it, but in 2 days I’ve really not found any significant difference between my former Xubuntu and Mint (XFCE Edition), probably this change of distribution would be harder for people moving from Unity to Cinnamon or Mate.
Perhaps Mint is more user friendly out of the box with more codecs and drivers (proprietary too) available and GUI to manage them, but I’m not good in reviewing these things as usually I use apt-get and aptitude to install software and vim to configure them so for most of the operations I don’t use graphical tools at all.

Anyway, in short the installation and the first approach has been nice, let’s see now how goes the process of update in the different releases, and using it in my day by day operations.