A little map of the area (the red line is the air line between two apartments),

We bought two different antennas, one directional antenna (Yagi) and one little stick receiving antenna.

Some Facts about the Yagi antenna:
Gain: +18dBi
Frequency range: 2,4 til 2,5GHz
Polarization: vertical or horizontal
Angle vertical: 35°
Angle horizontal: 35°
Impedance: 50 Ohm
Connector: RP-SMA
Dimensions: 500mm x 75mm
Weight: 1Kg

It was very easy to find the perfect place for the directional yagi antenna on the balcony and direct it to the second apartment.

Yagi antenna was connected to linksys Cisco WLAN-router WAG354G.
The first connection was established from the second apartment with an acer spire one netbook, it was possible to connect but the signal was very poor (massive packet loss). After some changes on the antennas and finding another WLAN-channel to avoid channel-overlapping the result was really fantastic.

DLNA uses Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) for media management, discovery and control.
I love DLNA and last year I wrote a review post about my Silver Stone DC01, which is used to browse everything from my TV. I will try to set up a little Debian Server with analogical usage to the Silver Stone DC 01.
In this post I will use OpenSource DLNA Server MiniDLNA and I install it on Debian squeeze (version 6.0.3).

First you go to sourceforge and Download the latest miniDLNA package.

You can choose between a static or source version which must be compiled.

Compile process:

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tar -xvf minidlna_1.0.22_src.tar.gz
cd minidlna-1.0.22/
make

To compile it you must install some dependencies like libsqlite3-dev libvorbis-dev, make will show them to you.

After successfully compiling process use:

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make install

to install miniDLNA.

Edit MiniDLNA configuration:

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vim /etc/minidlna.conf

You need to fix only the following lines:

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# Set this to the directory you want to share and scan
media_dir=/opt/Samba/Media
# Customize the server name that shows up on your clients
friendly_name=dc02
# Database folder
db_dir=/var/cache/minidlna
# Directory for MiniDLNA logs
log_dir=/var/log

BTW this is the original miniDLNA config from Silver Stone DC01:

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db_dir=/home/.nas
log_dir=/home/.nas
port=8200
strict_dlna=no
friendly_name=dc01
notify_interval=300
enable_tivo=no
media_dir=/home/admin/

-d flag for debug mode
Debug output – shorted:

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[2012/01/07 17:35:19] upnphttp.c:1126: debug: HTTP RESPONSE: HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/xml; charset="utf-8"
Connection: close
Content-Length: 2211

If you have more than one interface in your server (eth0, eth1…) you need to bind the daemon to the interface ip-address otherwise miniDLNA will bind the daemon to eth0 :((:

Example:

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minidlna -f /etc/minidlna.conf -a 10.1.100.1

By some reasons you can’t compile!?
Try the static version of miniDLNA out:

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tar -xvf minidlna_1.0.23_static.tar.gz
mv etc/minidlna.conf /etc/
mv usr/sbin/minidlna /usr/sbin/
mkdir /var/cache/minidlna

Start miniDLNA-Server:

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usr/sbin/minidlna -f etc/minidlna-id.conf

At the time I’m working on a functional init-script for Debian to start the miniDLNA automatically at boot-process.

UPDATE – 12.01.2011
As promised two solutions for automatic start at boot:

The lazy one;):

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vim /etc/rc.local

Content:

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if [ -d /opt/Media ]; then
minidlna -R -f /etc/minidlna.conf -a 10.1.100.1
fi
exit 0

Init-script:

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#!/bin/sh
 
# chkconfig: 345 99 10
# description: Startup/shutdown script for MiniDLNA daemon
#
# Based on the MiniUPnPd script by Thomas Bernard
# Modified for MiniDLNA by Justin Maggard <jmaggard@users.sourceforge.net>
# Modified: status-function, another check of the media folder and some useful arguments Igor Drobot
#
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          minidlna
# Required-Start:    $network $local_fs $remote_fs
# Required-Stop::    $network $local_fs $remote_fs
# Should-Start:      $all
# Should-Stop:       $all
# Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:      0 1 6
# Short-Description: DLNA-Server
### END INIT INFO
 
MINIDLNA=/usr/sbin/minidlna
MEDIADIR=/opt/Media
ARGS='-R -f /etc/minidlna.conf -a 10.1.100.1'
 
test -f $MINIDLNA || exit 0
test -d $MIDIADIR || exit 0
 
 
. /lib/lsb/init-functions
 
case "$1" in
start)  log_daemon_msg "Starting minidlna" "minidlna"
        start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile /var/run/minidlna.pid --startas $MINIDLNA -- $ARGS $LSBNAMES
        log_end_msg $?
        ;;
stop)   log_daemon_msg "Stopping minidlna" "minidlna"
        start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --pidfile /var/run/minidlna.pid
        log_end_msg $?
        ;;
restart|reload|force-reload)
        log_daemon_msg "Restarting minidlna" "minidlna"
        start-stop-daemon --stop --retry 5 --quiet --pidfile /var/run/minidlna.pid
        start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile /var/run/minidlna.pid --startas $MINIDLNA -- $ARGS $LSBNAMES
        log_end_msg $?
        ;;
status)
        status_of_proc -p /var/run/minidlna.pid $MINIDLNA minidlna && exit 0 || exit $?
        ;;
*)      log_action_msg "Usage: /etc/init.d/minidlna {start|stop|restart|reload|force-reload|status}"
        exit 2
        ;;
esac
exit 0

You have a dual monitor setup and you want to set for each one a special background, no problem now comes ImageMagick into play to montage two different backgrounds into a single one. Get to work:
Install ImageMagick:

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aptitude install imagemagick

Montage backgrounds one and two(1.jpg and 2.jpg) into a large one (background.jpg).

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montage 01.jpg 02.jpg -tile 2x1 -geometry "2560x1600+0+0" -mode concatenate background.jpg

The results? A great one!

Plus this one:)

OR

Installation:

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sudo add-apt-repository ppa:simonschneegans/testing
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gnome-pie

The installation is pretty easy, after successfully installation start gnome-pie (its running in your tray:)) and create your pies.

Ctrl+Alt+A reveals Applications
Ctrl+Alt+B reveals Bookmarks
Ctrl+Alt+Q reveals session controls
Ctrl+Alt+M reveals media controls
Ctrl+Alt+W reveals window management controls
Ctrl+Alt+Space reveals main menu

Everything work fine I can manage everything, but if security is important for you, you should look at the solution.

[1]Error message:

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The configuration file now needs a secret passphrase(blowfish_secret)

Solution :

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cat /var/lib/phpmyadmin/blowfish_secret.inc.php
$cfg['blowfish_secret'] = 'dfd3kjGj12dfT27665Z';

Get the blowfish_secret variable and paste it into the config.inc .php

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vim /usr/share/phpmyadmin/config.inc.php