No files were accessible anymore on the servers after the takedown, which had serious consequences for users who used the file hosting site for just that: to host their own files.

Users looking for a Megaupload alternative can check out our quick overview of file hosting services.

The Megaupload fallout has not ended yet though, as some file sharing sites have begun to change their business model, likely to avoid the fate of the service.

When you visit Filesonic’s website today you will notice an announcement on the frontpage that states:

All sharing functionality on Filesonic is now disabled. Our service can only be used to upload and retrieve files that you have uploaded personally

Users who try to download files see the following message instead on the Filesonic website:

All sharing functionality on FileSonic is now disabled. Our service can only be used to upload and retrieve files that you have uploaded personally.

If this file belongs to you, please login to download it directly from your file manager.

But FileSonic is not the only file sharing site that made changes to their business model after the Megaupload bust. Uploaded, another popular file sharing service, started to block visitors from the United States. Visitors from the United States see a blue landing page that tells them that the service is no longer available in their country.

Both file sharing companies are registered outside the United States. FileSonic operates from the Netherlands while Uploaded from Hong Kong.

Neither FileSonic nor Uploaded have released statements about the changes yet. There is no certainty that Megaupload’s takedown had anything to do with the decision but the proximity of events would suggest it did.

What’s going to happen next? It is likely that FileSonic will lose a good chunk of their traffic in the coming weeks. Users will move on and use other file sharing services to share files. It needs to be point out that this does not necessarily mean illegal activities. File sharing sites are ideal to share small to medium sized files with friends and family as well.

Users who have personal files on file sharing sites should consider making a backup of those files just in case. Services like Dropbox allow you to store files in the cloud, along with synchronization options and sharing.

Update: It appears that Fileserve has started to make changes as well. The file hosts affiliate program page is no longer accessible on the site, and according to Neowin, users are reporting that their accounts have been terminated. The message they receive when they log in states the following:

Unsuccessful login
Your account has been disabled due to violations of our Terms and Conditions

Update 2: File sharing service Uploadbox has announced that they will be shutting down servers. All files that they host will be deleted on January 30th.

Seven members of the site and two corporations – Megaupload Limited and Vestor Limited – were indicted by a grand jury in Virgina, and charged “with engaging in a racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, conspiring to commit money laundering and two substantive counts of criminal copyright infringement”.

Arrests have been made in New Zealand, were Megaupload founder Kim Schmitz and three others were arrested at the request of US officials. According to The Verge, a total of 20 search warrants have been issued in the US and eight other countries including The Netherlands, Germany, Canada and Australia. In addition, assets worth more than $50 million US Dollars have been seized as well as 18 domain names associated with the business.

Users who try to open the Megaupload website, any of the site’s inner pages, hosted files or one of the related domain names will notice that all connections time out. Megaupload, which has been listed as one of the top 100 sites at Alexa, and its cousin site Megavideo, in the sub 200 rankings, have been two of the most popular file sharing sites on the Internet.

The core question that many Internet users will have right now is if this will affect other file sharing services like Rapidshare as well.

If you read the Department of Justice press release thoroughly you will notice that much of it can be applied to nearly every popular file sharing site on the Internet.

• A business model expressly designed to promote uploading of the most popular copyrighted works for many millions of users to download
• A structure to discourage the vast majority of its users from using Megaupload for long-term or personal storage by automatically deleting content that was not regularly downloaded
• A rewards program that would provide users with financial incentives to upload popular content and drive web traffic to the site, often through user-generated websites known as linking sites.

Will we see a ripple effect? What’s your take? (via Neowin)

Update: The Department of Justice website, as well as several music industry related websites are currently targeted by Anonymous as a response to the take down of Megaupload. More information here at The Next Web.

The church is founded on the belief of sharing information and holds CTRL+C and CTRL+V as sacred symbols.  They say they do not promote or condone illegal file-sharing but are pleased that file-sharing generally has now been given “religious protection”.

In a statement the leader of the church, a 19 year old philosophy student, Isak Gerson said “For the Church of Kopimism, information is holy and copying is a sacrament. Information holds a value, in itself and in what it contains and the value multiplies through copying. Therefore copying is central for the organisation and its members.”

Despite this unexpected turn of events the Swedish government said that it wouldn’t mean illegal file-sharing was about to be legalised and music analyst Mark Mulligan told the BBC ”It doesn’t mean that illegal file-sharing will become legal, any more than if ‘Jedi’ was recognised as a religion everyone would be walking around with light sabres.  In some ways these guys are looking outdated. File-sharing as a means to pirate content is becoming yesterday’s technology.”

Whatever you might think of this new religion its recognition does at least help provide encouragement for those people who believe freedom of expression and freedoms to worship are being stifled.  In this respect it has to be a good thing.

File sharing generally is a “religious ceremony” according to the church and it comes at a time when the US government’s controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is causing concern and argument across the pond.

Bittorrent is another solution, one that requires basic knowledge of creating torrents and seeding it to friends. Bittorrent Share tries to reduce the complexity by making it easier for users to share data with their friends (keep in mind that Share is a temporary name subject to change).

Users can download the alpha version from the official website. A free account is required which can be created directly in the application. Share is initially available for Windows systems, with Mac and Linux systems announced to be available at a later point in time.

Share users can then use the file browser or drag and drop to add files to the program that they want to share with individual friends or groups. Multiple files, for instance a folder full of photos, are automatically grouped together.

You can share the files with users either by entering individual email addresses into the share form, a name of a user that you previously shared with, or by selecting a previously created group. Groups allow you to share with multiple users at the same time, for instance your college football team, your family or colleagues at work.

The emails users receive point to a download page. Users who want to download the shared files need to create a Share account as well before they can download the files. This is different from downloading shared files with software like uTorrent, as no accounts are required to do so.

Share has no file size limitations as it is based on the same technology that powers all Bittorrent clients. Users should however keep in mind that they upload the files to the users they share with, which can mean that the total bandwidth spend sending those files may be larger than the size of all files.

All users with access can leave comments in the program interface. Invited users will also share the files automatically with other users that have been invited to download the files. This access restriction is one of the advantages of Share, as it allows users to limit access to files they want to share.

Bittorrent (the company) notes that it will “initially host and remotely seed a file for a limited time” to “ensure quality of service and file availability”.

The big issue here is that the initial seeder needs to be online when other users start the file download. This can be a issue if the software is not open about this to both seeders and downloaders. This is probably one of the reasons why Bittorrent made that decision.

The company intents to integrate Share into Bittorrent and uTorrent clients. What they mean by this is that both clients will include features to download files shared via Share in the future. This is beneficial to existing uTorrent or Bittorrent users who do not want to download another software to download those files to their computer.

Share in its current form is a dumbed down Bittorrent client with integrated social features that simplifies the sharing of files. While it simplifies the sharing, it adds to the complexity of the operation by requiring accounts prior to downloading files.

What’s your take on Bittorrent Share?

There are a great many services available including, to name just a few, Facebook, SkyDrive, Flickr and Picassa.  But what if you want to put photos online that aren’t for sharing, and are just for personal access or storage?  This can be more of a problem because by default these websites (with very few exceptions) will assume that you’re putting photos online because you ‘want’ to share them with friends and family.

Examples of photos that you might want to keep private include the full unabridged copies of your holiday photos, including all the ones of the drunk idiot, and perhaps insurance photos that you want to keep in a safe place away from your home in the event of fire.

In this tutorial I just want to talk about Microsoft’s SkyDrive as this this service will be integrated into Windows 8 making it easy, or at least easier, to upload photos to the service and it is one of the photo sharing services already built into Windows Live Gallery.

The other reason I want to highlight SkyDrive is that this service is one of the worst offenders, assuming that any and every new photo gallery you create is to be made public.  Your SkyDrive service is linked directly to your Windows Live Account, and you can link your Windows Live account to many other accounts including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr and more.  You could then suddenly find your personal photos scattered right across the web without you realising it.

To make sure you have your settings set appropriately you need to log into your account at SkyDrive.com and in the top right click on the Profile link.  Once in your profile page click on the Privacy Settings link (see 1 and 2 in the screenshot above).

The default settings in SkyDrive don’t allow you to make everything completely private, which can be annoying if you only use the service for storage as I do.  At the next screen you’ll want to click the Advanced settings link near the bottom of the page, just next to the Save button.  This will take you through to another page where you can set absolute privacy rules for everything you store on SkyDrive, including your photos.

The most important setting here is the one labelled New photo albums.  You will probably find this set to Some Friends or Friends by default.  You’ll want to take this setting down to Just me instead.  The setting for New file folders should already be set as Just me but it is worth checking.  Below this are additional options to modify the privacy of folders you have already created.  You should press the Save button when you are finished.

You can also do this in the main SkyDrive view.  When you holver over a folder a blue information icon will appear on the far right of the screen (see image above).  If you click on this it will display a sidebar of additional options for that particular folder only.  Here you can also change the sharing settings for that folder by clicking on the Edit permissions link.  You can send people a link to photos stored here too if you want to share the contents of the folder.

It’s is very important to remember to change the folder sharing settings before uploading photos to the folder!  If you do this afterwards, you could find that the images have already been shared with other websites.  This means that those websites, rather than having a link back to the photo on SkyDrive, may pull the photo down and store a copy locally.

It is disappointing that some services, and of course I’m singling SkyDrive out here for particular attention, don’t offer you better privacy controls when you first create a folder or upload photos.  They may offer this in the future, but for now this is how you can keep your photos and files safe and secure.

Some services, like Microsoft’s Hotmail allow multiple attachments with a size of up to 50 Megabytes each. They achieve this by hosting those files on their SkyDrive service.

The file size limit on file hosting sites is usually way larger than the 20-25 Megabytes per attachment that you get when you use email. While that is great if you need to send larger files, you should keep in mind that you transfer the files to a third party server. Use encryption or find a private server if you need to transfer important files.

Minus is a relatively new file hosting service that tries to fill the void that the popular file host Drop.io left behind (see Facebook buys Drop.io, shuts it down)

Minus offers file sharing for guests and registered members of the site. If you are a guest, you can simply drag and drop files on the minus web page to upload them to the file host. You can alternatively use the select link to launch a file browser to pick one or multiple files from the local system for uploading.

The file size limit has been set to 25 Megabytes for guests and 50 Megabytes for members, which should be enough in most cases. You need to split files if you want to share files larger than the file size limit.

You can add a caption to each file that you have uploaded to minus. Links are available to share, view or download individual files. A click on share displays the file url on the Min.us server farm, view is available for some file types like images, while download is available for file types that do not have an online viewer associated with them.

Guests need to know that their session expires once they upload new files which means that guests cannot access previously uploaded files anymore. Bad if you forgot to copy the file sharing urls.

Member accounts come with several benefits, from the increased file size limit of 50 Megabytes and access to the upload history to file galleries and the ability to modify the sharing url of your uploaded files. Probably the most important difference to public accounts is the ability to delete files that have been uploaded in the past.

Min.us creates galleries of uploaded files automatically. One interesting option here is the ability to download all files of a gallery as a zip file, handy if you want to download dozens of photos that have been posted to a gallery.

Tools for Windows, Linux and Mac, mobile devices and web browsers are available to make sure that users can upload files from virtually any device, even if they are not on the Min.us website.

What’s Missing?

It appears as if all files that you upload are automatically public. They are protected by the randomly generated url (which members can edit by the way), but that’s not the best of protections.

An option to set individual files to private, for instance by adding an option to password protect them, would be helpful.

Other than that, there is not much to criticize. If you are looking for an easy to use file hosting service, then you should take a closer look at Min.us.

In a statement, MediaCAT’s barrister, Tim Ludbrook read a statement from solicitor Andrew Crossley that said “I have ceased my work…I have been subject to criminal attack. My e-mails have been hacked. I have had death threats and bomb threats.” according to a report by the BBC.  ”It has caused immense hassle to me and my family,” he added.

ACS: Law was the firm at the centre of a hacking scandal back on September 2010 when thousands of its emails were exposed showing the people who were being accused of downloading pornographic movies for free.  Consumer groups have said that ACS: Law were sending thousands of letters to innocent people and some ISPs refused to hand over details of their customers.

Judge Birss, the same judge who ruled on the case in December said “I want to tell you that I am not happy. I am getting the impression with every twist and turn since I started looking at these cases that there is a desire to avoid any judicial scrutiny.”  This follows accusations that ACS: Law have been seeking to extract money from people without ever having any intention of taking them to court.  These accusations intensified when it was discovered that ACS: Law was pocketing 65% of the money collected.

Mr Ludbrook said “It has always been my intention to litigate and, but for the fact that I have ceased this work, my intention was to litigate forcefully in these 27 cases.”  It has emerged however that another law firm, GCB Ltd has now begun sending similar letters, including to one person who had received a letter from ACS: Law saying they would be taking no further action against them.

According to the BBC…

Judge Birss said he was considering banning MediaCAT from sending any more such letters until the issues raised by the cases had been resolved.  The judge was keen to find out what the relationship was between GCB and ACS: Law, something Mr Crossley sought to clarify in his statement.  He said that he had no connection with GCB Ltd beyond the fact that the founders of the firm had previously been employed at ACS: Law.

Barrister Guy Tritton [acting on behalf of the accused] questioned the nature of the letters sent by ACS: Law, asking why it described MediaCAT as a “copyright protection society,” – a title that he said was “misleading”.

This has raised serious questions about whether an IP address could be used to positively identify a person who has downloaded illegal content.  Many have said that lawyers are attempting to exploit the legal system and the lack of technical knowledge of judges.  Judge Birss is expected to deliver his judgement on the case later this week and we’ll bring you the story as it happens.

The top three websites were RapidShare.com, Megavideo.com and Megaupload.com which between them generated more than 21 billion visits.

The study was commissioned by the US Chamber of Commerce to identify trends and rogue websites.  Mark Mulligan of research firm Forrester was cautious though, saying that the number of visits did not  necessarily equate to the number of downloads.

RapidShare has come under fire from the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) which blames the site of carrying huge volumes of pirates content.  The website is based in Switzerland though which has made it difficult for US companies to deal with.

The number of hits are very high indeed, but these figures must not be used in an alarmist way, which is what organisations such as the RIAA are bound to do.  If you look at the hits for most websites, the majority of those are for the front page only and people do not search any deeper.  This, I would imagine, will also be the case for  file sharing websites.  There will also be indexing taking place that could count as visits.

Thus the actual problem of file-sharing won’t be anywhere near as bad as these figures suggest.  We can expect the music and movie industries to attempt to pass the full 53 billion figure off as a “good estimate” of how many files are shared every year.  We can thus expect more fallout from this research in the coming months.

Features

Although not a HUGE list, the features of iptux are really impressive.

• Auto-detect other iptux users.
• Create shared resources (send files).
• Password protect resources.
• Change your online information.

What I like most about iptux’ shared resources is that you can password protect your shared resources. And you can easily add/remove files to the resource management. This way you can add files to your shared management that have a password, share them, remove them, and then add files that do not have a password. A nice feature would be to enable the ability to have both password protected and open files in the same manager. That’s not there yet, but would be very handy in a company environment.

Installation

The installation is simple. Just follow these (fairly standard) steps:

1. Open up your Add/Remove Software utility.
2. Search for “iptux” (no quotes).
3. Mark iptux for installation.
4. Click Apply to install.
5. Close your Add/Remove Software utility.

Usage

Figure 1

To start up iptux click Applications > Internet > iptux. This will fire up the main window (see Figure 1) where you will quickly see anyone who happens to be on line and also using iptux. As you can see iptux gives you the “Pals” name and ip address. An unconfigured “Pal” will only list their username. Naturally you can configure iptux to display any name you like. But first, let me show you how to send a message and set up resources.

Figure 2

To send a message double click on the Pal you want to communicate with to open up the chat window (see Figure 2). The actual chatting is fairly straightforward.  Type and click Send.

To create resources to share with users click Tools > Shared Managment. In this new window

Figure 3

(see Figure 3) you add files and/or folder to your shared resources. If you want to password protect your shared resources, click Set Password and enter your password.

To request shared resources from a Pal simply right-click the Pal in your main window and select Request Shared Resources. NOTE: When you accept a shared directory, you download the full directory. You can not traverse the directory and choose only particular files. So choose wisely when you share a directory.

Figure 4

When you request shared resources that are password protected, you will be prompted for the password even before you see the listing of files and folders. Once you reach the shared resources window (see Figure 4) you can select what you want to download and where you want to download it to.

Final thoughts

The iptux application is an ideal little tool for collaborating with fellow workers. It’s simple to use, allows you to create shared resources, and is very unobtrusive. Take advantage of this handy application to make your work life much easier.

Well…you can do that with the help of Giver. Giver is a networking tool that automatically detects other Giver users on your network and allows you to quickly and simply share files with them. I do hesitantly write this article only because it seems the development of Giver has come to a stop. That doesn’t keep the application from working exactly as it should, and it still installs on just about any recent release of Ubuntu. So, even though development might have stopped for the moment, the application is still very valid and very useful. And in this article I will show you how to install and use this handy network file sharing tool.

Installation

The installation of giver is very simple. All you need to do is follow these steps:

1. Open up the Add/Remove Software Tool.
2. Search for “giver” (no quotes).
3. Mark Giver for installation.
4. Click Apply to install.
5. When finished, close the Add/Remove Software tool.

When Giver is installed you can start up the tool by clicking Applications > Internet > Giver. This will open up the application and plant an easily accessible icon in the notification area.

Usage

Figure 1

As I have mentioned before, the usage of Giver is incredibly simple. The Giver Recipients window (see Figure 1)  will automatically populate with anyone else on your LAN running Giver. This may take some time (depending on how many users there are and how fast your network is). You can give a file by clicking on the user you want and clicking either Give File or Give Folder. When you select either of these a file manager will open where you can navigate to the file and select it.

Figure 2

Once you have given the the file the recipient will see a notification (see Figure 2) that a user wants to give them a file.

When the file is received both sender and receiver will be notified of the success.

Preferences

Figure 3

There aren’t much in the way of settings for Giver. If you right click the notification try icon you can select Preferences. When this new window opens (see Figure 3) you can then change your Name, Picture, and File location.

A word of warning: The only way I have been able to change the picture used for Giver is to use a Web Link. For some reason the File will not open a file manager window to browse for the image file.

By default Giver will save files transferred to you to the Desktop. If you don’t want that click the File Location drop box and select where you want the files to be saved to.

Final thoughts

Although Giver might not be currently in development, it is still a very useful application that allows users to quickly exchange files over a LAN. It does not have the ability to share files outside of that LAN, but within a business or home, this is a nice tool to have around.

Regardless of that, some progress has been made in the past year on how files are shared between peers. The original file hosters all were using the same model. User A uploads the files to the servers of the file host, gets a link pointing to those files to share with other users.

Differences were usually only found in the limitations, mainly the maximum upload size, amount of allowed downloads of a file, retention on the server or download speeds.

The new breed of file sharing sites however make use of a different system to allow transfers between users. The main difference is the fact that those are direct transfers between the users, so that no data needs to be stored on the service’s servers. This reduces the bandwidth bill of the service considerably.

This method has advantages and disadvantages, just like any other service. The main advantage is the ability to directly send files to other users, without having to store the data on third party servers. That’s however also possible with other technologies like ftp, many instant messengers or IRC though. Those do require the installation of third party software on the other hand.

The main disadvantages are that both users need to be online for the transfer, that it has to be repeated if more than one user requests the file, and that the services make use of Flash to send and receive the files. Why is Flash bad for that? Because it has file size limitations. Users can upload files with a maximum size equal to their installed computer RAM. Receiving users can only receive files half the size of their actual RAM.

Finally, the majority of services make use of the UDP protocol, which may be blocked by restrictive firewalls and routers.

File Sharing Services

1. Jetbytes

jetbytes

Jetbytes offers a plain interface, that’s easy to use. It begins with the selection of a file to send to another user. The Choose File button opens a file browser where that file can be selected. It is suggested to put multiple files into one archive so that they can be send at once.

Jetfile will then display a url that the recipient needs to open. Once the url is opened the file transfer begins.

direct file sharing

File transfer speeds depend largely on the uploading capabilities of the sending computer, and the download speed of the receiving one.

2. Dushare

dushare

Dushare offers the same basic principle for transferring files as Jetshare, but adds several extra features on top of that. The process begins in the same way. The uploading user selects a file from the local computer system. It is now possible to add a password to the file, to protect it from users who spy on the network traffic.

The downloading user opens the url in the browser, and the transfer starts. A chat window is open, that can be used to chat while the file transfers.

Dushare is no longer available. The website returns a 404 found error.

3. XFiles

The Xfiles page is filled with ads, which may turn away some users immediately, considering that there are valid file sharing alternatives available.

The process works in the same way though. The first user selects a file, and gets a url that then needs to be shared with the downloading user.

4. iSendr

Another slick service that works exactly as the other services mentioned in the article. Pick a file, send the url to a friend so that the friend can download the file. Nothing more to say about this peer to peer file transfer service.

5. Files over Miles

files over miles

Files over miles is the last service in this category. It again offers to send files directly to other users.

All services are easy to use and offer the same functionality, with the exception of Dushare which adds password protection and chat on top of it.

These file sharing services are a solid alternative for sharing small (larger than the maximum email attachment size) to medium sized files directly with a single user. A major nuisance is the fact that the uploading user needs to use a different communication channel (e.g. email or IM) to send the file url to the downloading user.

In this article I am going to demonstrate how simple it is to share a folder, using NFS, between a Ubuntu machine and a Debian machine. When all is said and done, you’ll be surprised at how simple it is.

What is NFS?

NFS stands for (take a guess…) Network File System. NFS is a protocol developed by Sun Microsystems in 1984 to allow computers to share files and folders over a network. NFS is an open standard, defined in RFCs, and allows any to implement the protocol.

Although many prefer to employ Samba for network folder sharing, NFS still has a lot of good uses and some even prefer it over the more flexible Samba.

Installation

Both client and server will need the package nfs-common. On the server machine you will need to install the package nfs-kernel-server. To install these packages follow these steps:

1. Open up Synaptic (or your favorite Add/Remove Program utility).
2. Search for “nfs” (no quotes).
3. Mark nfs-common (for the client) and nsf-common and nfs-kernel-server (for the server).
4. Click Apply to install.

That’s it. Now it’s time for a little configuration.

Configuration

For example’s sake, the two machines we are using are addressed as such:

Server: 192.168.1.100

Client: 192.168.1.10

On the client we will create a directory which the NFS server share will mounted to. We’ll create the folder ~/UBUNTU_NFS with the command mkdir ~/UBUNTU_NFS. Now let’s move over to the server.

The first thing to be done on the server machine is to create folder that will be shared out. Let’s call that folder ~/SHARE and we’ll create it with the command mkdir ~/SHARE.

Now we have to create an entry in the /etc/exports folder. This entry will tell NFS what to share and who to share with. The entry will look like:

/home/USERNAME/SHARE     192.168.1.10(rw)

Where USERNAME is the actual name of the user. NOTE: You could share a folder in /opt if you like.

Now nfs-kernel-server has to be restarted with the command:

/etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server restart

Mounting

Hop back on to the client machine and issue the command:

sudo mount 192.168.1.100:/home/USER/SHARE /home/USER/UBUNTU_NFS

Where USER is the actual user name.

You should get no errors. Now let’s test this out. Hop on back to the server and create a file within ~/SHARE. After you create that file, check the ~/UBUNTU_NFS directory on the client to make sure the file shows up. Try to delete that file. Now create a file in the ~/UBUNTU_NFS directory on the client. You should have no problems creating a file.

Automounting

Say you want this share to always be mounted upon boot of the client machine. This, of course would require the server machine to be on. To do this add an entry on the client machine’s /etc/fstab that looks like:

192.168.1.100:/home/jlwallen/ELIVE  /home/jlwallen/UBUNTU  nfs rsize=1024,wsize=1024,noauto 0 0

NOTE: The above fstab entry is all one line.

Now that NFS share will mount even when the machine is rebooted.

Final thoughts

As you can see, NFS has become much easier than it was in the old days. Now, armed with NFS and Samba, you can be sharing files and folders with anyone and everyone.

In this article I am going to show you how to get a basic Samba Server up and running on top of that Ubuntu Server. Now, because the Ubuntu Server was set up as a headless server, the installation and configuration of Samba will be done completely from the command line. So get your fingers ready to type.

What is Samba?

Samba is a very handy tool that can do many things. The primary task it serves is to enable a Windows machine to access a Linux machine serving as a file and/or print server. Samba uses the SMB/CIFS protocols to enable communication between the Windows and the Linux machine.

Samba has often been thought of as very difficult to get up and running. It’s not really that bad. Hopefully, by the end of this article, you will have a fairly good understanding of how to get it up and running.

Installing Samba

As I said, you will doing this completely from the command line. The command to issue is:

sudo apt-get install samba

You will have to enter your sudo password to continue with the installation. Depending upon your server installation, you might have to okay some dependencies. Go ahead and do this and then watch as Samba is installed.

Once installed you will have the Samba executable in /etc/init.d/. In order to start Samba you will issue the command:

/etc/init.d/samba start

Of course, before you start Samba, you will need to configure Samba. There are a few steps to take care of. Let’s first deal with the configuration file.

Configuring Samba

Before you get too deep into this you might want to first read my article “Get To Know Linux: Understanding smb.conf“. The Samba configuration file is located in the /etc/samba directory and is called smb.conf. When you first open up this file you may be overwhelmed. Let’s avoid that by making a backup of the original smb.conf file. Change to the /etc/samba directory with the command:

cd /etc/samba

Now issue the following command:

sudo cp smb.con smb.conf.bak

Now you can open up the smb.conf file and erase the entirety of its contents. How do you do that? If you are using the Nano editor it’s simple. With the file open hold the Ctrl key and the ‘K’ key down until the entire contents are gone. Or you can delete the file and create a new one. Your choice.

With a fresh smb.conf you are ready to re-create a file based on your needs. A good configuration to start with looks like:

[global]
netbios name = NETBIOS_NAME
workgroup = WORKGROUP_NAME
security = user
encrypt passwords = yes
smb passwd file = /etc/samba/smbpasswd
interfaces = 192.168.1.1/8

[SHARE_NAME]
comment = COMMENT
path = /PATH/TO/SHARE
writeable = yes
create mode = 0600
directory mode = 0700
locking = yes

Where everything in ALL CAPS (as well as the interfaces line) is unique to your needs.

The SHARE_NAME is what you want to share out to your users. So if you are setting up a file server for a number of users you will want to have a directory, say /data, that is shared out through Samba.

Once you have the smb.conf file configured to suit your needs you are ready for the last steps.

Adding users

This is the step that most people skip and wonder why Samba isn’t working. For every user that needs to log in to the Samba server you have to add them with the help of the smbpasswd command. Let’s say I need to add the user “pickles”.  To add “pickles” I would issue the command:

sudo smbpasswd -L -a pickles

Now to make sure the users is enabled issue the command:

sudo smbpasswd -L -e pickels

Now restart Samba with the command:

sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart

Your Samba file server should be ready to go. Go to your windows machine and the Share should be visible. Double click on that share you and you will enter the username and password combination for any one of the users on the machine (as long as they were also added with smbpasswd). If you can not see it make sure your Windows machine is set up on the Workgroup.

In fact even getting to the web-based administration screen isn’t easy from the Linux point of view. The instructions say point your browser to http://bubba and log in. When using a browser on Linux this will take you to search results for “bubba”. And the only mention of an IP address in the instructions is 192.168.10.1. Since my local network uses 192.168.1.x I couldn’t see the address. So what could I do? Let’s take a look.

Figure 1

Once you have the Bubba 2 plugged in (the instructions are quite clear and simple for this step) your first task is to locate the IP address for the machine. For this I employed Wireshark. As you can see, in Figure 1, there is some external traffic (some of which is from Facebook – must look into that) but the IP address of interest is the .16 address. Since there is a lot of traffic coming from that address it is a safe bet that address is attached to the Bubba 2.

So I point my browser to 192.168.1.16 and voila!, the Bubba 2 network admin screen is up. Wireshark has done its job for the day.

Since the Bubba 2 can stream music there has to be a way to place music into the /home/storage/music folder. Any music in this folder will be served up via DAAP. Problem is, how to get it there? It took me a bit of time, but I found a solution.

The first thing to do is to log into the web admin tool. By default the user/password is admin/admin. You can change this to meet your needs of course. Log in as your admin and click on the Fileserver section. Here you can upload all the music you need. Problem is, you can only load one file at a time (you can’t load directories.) With over 15,000 music files to copy this wasn’t an option. My next attempt found me using FTP to transfer directories to the Bubba 2. This worked to a point. What I now had was a standard user with a directory full of music which could not be streamed. This lead me to my next problem: I couldn’t move the directories from the users ~/ directory to /home/storage/music because of permissions issues.

The work around came about with the help of an external USB hard drive. This is the same drive that contains my entire music collection. By connecting this drive to the Bubba 2 I was then able to copy the entire contents of this drive to the /home/storage/music directory which was then ready for streaming.

Streaming to Linux

Figure 2

The easiest method of listening to the music on the Bubba 2 is with a DAAP-enalbed piece of software. Out of the box Rhythmbox was able to connect to the stream. To do this you right click in an empty area of the left nav where a new menu will open (see Figure 2). In this new menu you will see an entry “Connect to DAAP share”. Select that and enter the IP address of your Bubba 2.

Shortly after you do this, your Shared library will populate with music from your Bubba 2. Listen away.

Final Thoughts

The Bubba 2 isn’t limited to only music streaming. You can share out printers and email as well. But when you’re having to connect from a Linux box, you might have to go through a few more steps than you would with either Windows or Mac. Even with these extra steps, it’s worth it. The Bubba 2 is an outstanding piece of hardware that makes sharing to small networks a snap.

The OFF-System is a peer to peer networking system that is using a different approach than darknets like Freenet. Darknets anonymize user data while the Off-System creates randomized multi-used data blocks which means that it is not possible to map a data block to a single file on the network.

To retrieve data from the peer to peer network one would need to download all required blocks plus the so called retrieval url which is created when files are added to the network. Each block on its own is nothing but a set of random data which means that this data is not copyrighted by anyone.

The developers have a multi-page article on their website describing it in great detail. Users on the other hand can simply download the Open Source client of the Off-System which comes with a comfortable search function build in.

The options are quite extensive ranging from incoming and outgoing filters, security settings like trusted nodes to networking and advanced options. There is usually a overhead involved when replicating files which can range from a 50%-200% file increase on the receiving end.

After Samba is installed the smb.conf file will be around 533 lines long. Fear not. It’s much easier than it seems.

The smb.conf file is broken into sections. Each section will start with a line that looks like:

[TITLE]

Where TITLE is the actual title of the block. Each block represents either a configuration or a  share that other machines can connect to. You will, at minimum, have a global block and a single share.

Global

The global block is one of the more important blocks in your smb.conf file. This block defines the global configuration of your Samba server. This block begins with:

[global]

Within your blocks your configuration lines will be made up of:

option = value

statements.

The most important statements you will need in your global block are:
netbios name= NAME
workgroup = WORKGROUP_NAME
security = SECURITY_TYPE
encrypt passwords = YES/NO
smb passwd file = /path/to/smbpasswd
interfaces = ALLOWED_ADDRESSES

The values for each option above should be self explanatory. But there is one thing to note. If you are encrypting passwords you will need to add users (with passwords) with the smbpasswd command.
Within the global block one of the more important options is the security option. This option refers to authentication (how users will be able to log in). There are five different types of security:

• ADS – Active Directory Domain
• Domain – User verification through NT Primary or Backup Domain
• Server – Samba server passes on authentication to another server
• Share – Users do not have to enter username or password (until they try to access a specific directory)
• User – Users must provide valid username/password. This is the default.

Share Blocks

The next blocks will refer to individual shares. You will need a different block for each directory you want to share to Samba users. A typical share block will look like this:
[SHARE NAME]
comment = COMMENT
path = /path/to/share
writeable = YES/NO
create mode = NUMERIC VALUE
directory mode = NUMERIC VALUE
locking = YES/NO

Everything in caps above will be defined according to your needs. The tricky entries will be the create and directory modes. What this does is define permissions for any file created as well as the share directories. So the values will be in the form of 0700 or 0600 (depending upon your permission needs). Remember, you will need a share block for every directory you want to share out.

Naturally there are plenty of options that can be used in Samba. Many of these options will fall in the global block.

Printer Block

You can also define a block to share out printers. This block will start with:

[printers]

and will contain options like:
comment = COMMENT
path = /PATH/TO/PRINTER/SPOOL
browseable = YES/NO
guest ok = YES/NO
writable = YES/NO
printable = YES/NO
create mode = NUMERIC VALUE

Sample smb.conf

I have an external drive that I mount to /media/music and I share out to my home network with the following smb.conf file:
[global]
netbios name = MONKEYPANTZ
workgroup = MONKEYPANTZ
security = user
encrypt passwords = yes
smb passwd file = /etc/samba/smbpasswd
interfaces = 192.168.1.1/8
[wallen music]
comment = Music Library
path = /media/music
writeable = yes
create mode = 0600
directory mode = 0700
locking = yes

And that’s it. That is my entire smb.conf file. Granted I am only sharing out a single directory, but it shows how simple smb.conf can be to configure.

One person who has acted on this subject in the past is Joe Biden. Yes, the same guy who’s now the U.S. Vice President. In fact, he’s been pretty active in trying to defend the rights of media companies. Let’s take a look at his accomplishments.

Joe Biden’s earliest tryst against piracy came in 2002, when he drafted a letter to the Justice Department, urging action against people who ‘intentionally’ allow copying over p2p networks. Then last year, Biden supported an RIAA-led bill to restrict Americans from copying songs from Internet radio services. His efforts got him invited to the MPAA’s party in favor of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

In April of this year, Biden tried to get the US government to spend a billion dollars so that authorities could monitor p2p networks for illegal activity. What constitutes illegal activity, I have no idea.

Joe Biden has been pretty vocal about other aspects of the Internet as well, most notably a strong supporter of having Internet filters in place for schools. Another interesting tidbit is that at one time, the man also supported levying an Internet tax on people.

It remains to be seen what Joe Biden will do in his newfound political role as Vice President. However, going by his track record, it’s fair to say he’ll be on the media companies’ side most of the time.

What do you think of Joe Biden’s war against Internet piracy? Do you know of other political figures who have the same ideals? How do you think politics affects Internet legislation? Let me know in the comments.

Torrentvalley is different from other BitTorrent services in that it’s not a file tracker like Pirate Bay. Instead, it’s a torrent indexer. That means Torrentvalley does not host any torrents itself. Rather, it acts like a search engine and attempts to locate the torrent across different trackers.

Another interesting fact is that Torrentvalley’s servers are located in Bulgaria, a country not particularly noted for targeting file-sharers. Unfortunately, that hasn’t lasted very long. Acting on the advice of the Bulgarian Association of Music Producers (BAMP), the Cyber Crime Unit raided Torrentvalley’s premises and shut down its servers.

The charge laid against Torrentvalley was copyright infringement. To quote Ina Kileva, the executive director of BAMP: “Torrentvalley was a major international source of copyright infringing material. This site was a gate towards more than 5 000 torrent-trackers from all over the world. The decisive action by the authorities shows that Bulgaria is no haven for copyright abuse in Internet and makes efforts to protect the rights of those involved in the creative industries.”

Torrentvalley certainly wasn’t the largest BitTorrent network out there. They had about 150,000 registered users but a fair number of people probably used the indexing service without registering. This does reinforce the fact that the authorities are always on the lookout for those that share copyrighted content.

Have you ever used Torrentvalley.com? What do you think about the site being shut down? Who do you think the next target will be? Let me know in the comments.

As LimeWire is open-source, several forks of it exist. One of these forks is called FrostWire, a client which appears and works in a similar fashion but removes many limitations of the free version of LimeWire. FrostWire also has some features which LimeWire Pro lacks, such as BitTorrent support.

Unlike LimeWire Pro, FrostWire is completely free to use and download. FrostWire is based on LimeWire’s Java engine and as such, it works on OS X, Linux and Windows, providing Java 1.5 or above is installed.

FrostWire can identify files tagged as Creative Commons in searches, much like LimeWire does, it can filter out junk results like LimeWire, supports proxies, works well with iTunes and there’s no viruses or spyware with it. A more in-depth review is on my weblog, Webby’s World.

FrostWire is an easy way to save $35 if you really wanted to buy LimeWire Pro. It is also a way to ensure people do not profit from tools which mainly facilitate piracy!

I don’t intend to start a debate on whether or not it’s the right course of action but it does bug me when innocent people get pulled up for something they did not do. And that’s exactly what happened to an elderly couple in the UK recently.

The couple, in their 50s were stunned to receive a letter from a UK-based law firm called Davenport Lyons, accusing them of uploading an Atari game. The letter demanded a compensation fee of 500 pounds as well as additional 25 pounds for copyright infringement. Of course, the crime was identified by tracing the IP address involved back to these people.

The victims vehemently denied the charges and yes, they were able to back it up. They did not own the game in question nor was any trace of P2P or other file-sharing software found on their computer. Neither did they have WiFi access so it’s unlikely that someone else hacked into an unsecured connection.

Thanks to the intervention of consumer group Which? Computing, the charges against these people were dropped. However, no one’s answering the most important question: how did they get hold of the victim’s IP address?

One theory is that it’s simply a goof-up. The other is that Atari decided to set an example and didn’t care who they targeted. What do you think of this situation? Is it justified? Let me know in the comments.