I'm sure there will be many useful suggestions. Mine are limited to some specific issues: Power: strongly recommend that you install an intelligent UPS. That i

I'm sure there will be many useful suggestions. Mine are limited to some specific issues: Power: strongly recommend that you install an intelligent UPS. That is one that can shutdown the server on command once the battery power is below a set threshold. Non-fixed IP address: the simple solution is to configure one of the many dynamic DNS services. Most firewall/routers have support for this feature. Internet facing server: Although you can use DDNS, I personally would rather have a well firewalled server doing suitable pull requests. Gmail: you can configure either LDAP or POP3 and periodically copy down all your emails. POP3 is a bit simpler to set up, whilst LDAP has more features. You could use Thunderbird or simply a suitably configured SMTP daemon. Duplicate files: the 'fdupes' utility can be very useful. However, I recommend doing a backup before you run it. There are scenarios when a malformed command can delete more than you had intended. Backups: no matter how much storage you have on your HTPC it would be prudent to configure scheduled backups to external hard-drives which then you store securely, preferably with at at least one set at another location.