SSH Streaming Media

I hope your Christmas was as good as mine! Five days! I had five days to spend with my family and let me tell you how much I loved that! Unfortunately, Katie's parents couldn't make it due to the snow, but it was still great family time.

And now with New Year's Day off as well, I'm amazed that I'm still able to put on my geek hat and get anything done.

One of the great things about my job is that I can listen to music (with headphones) while I work. Now I'm by no means an audiophile or in possession of a music library ... I don't even own a stereo, but I do likes me some geek solutions.

Until recently, I had stashed an external hard drive at work that held some of my music that I had in a playlist set to loop and random which gave the illusion of my own personal radio station. I wasn't dedicated enough to tote the hard drive back and forth with new music and I didn't want to hassle with anything like Last.fm or other web-based solutions.

Then in a flash of clarity I came up with a solution. My home computer runs an SSH server that I use to tunnel my WiFi connections and I had just read about sshfs, a Linux app that grafts an SSH server's file system into your computer's file system.

SSH server w/ music + sshfs = streaming media server!
It's rediculously easy with a Ubuntu laptop:

1. Install an SSH server on your home computer.
2. Install sshfs on your laptop:
   

   sudo apt-get install sshfs

3. "Graft" your home computer's file system into your laptop's:
   

   sshfs username@home.computer.dns:/cygdrive /home/yourusername/sshfs

I've only used this from my laptop at work where I have .amazing. bandwidth, but I didn't notice any lagging, skipping or other connection related problems with actually playing music or video.

<geek>Ubuntu makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.</geek>

... you'd better be careful home pc, one mis-step and I'm going to toss Windows XP and slap Ubuntu Server on you. If it weren't for my addiction to PC games I would have done so long ago ... but what's this ... WINE you say?

... interesting!