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Amahi Home Server - The Free Alternative to Windows Home Server?

Over the past week my Windows Home Server box has been crashing, restarting and causing me and my family many problems.  It’s not been the first time this has happened.  A couple of times now I have managed to rescue data from it before re-installing Windows Home Server on the same machine and starting again.

I decided to ask people on Twitter if they knew of an alternative to Windows Home Server.  I chat to quite a few Linux geeks on Twitter and they’re always trying to get me off my Windows machines.  I’m not a fan boy but I do use Microsoft operating systems normally because I can run all kinds of software and games that I wouldn’t be able to with Linux.  This wasn’t really a concern for a server.  All I wanted were back-ups and some shared folders that could be accessed across my home network.

A great guy on Twitter named Simon Doyle (@sidolye) suggested that I should take a look at Amahi so I did.  I was very impressed with what I saw looking around the website and was sold on installing it after reading some of the testimonials.

First of all I needed to download myself a Fedora 10 Installation DVD (Fedora 11 isn’t supported with Amahi yet) which I got from here.  Don’t do what I did in my haste and excitement though – I stupidly downloaded the PPC version which is of course for Power PC Mac’s – that’s not going to work on a home built PC with an AMD64 processor.  You need the i386 version. EDIT: The x64 version is also supported so you could also use that if you have a 64bit CPU.

Installation of Fedora 10 was a breeze.  I have installed various Linux distributions in the past but I’m no expert.  I don’t think anyone would have a problem with it as long as they read the on-screen instructions.

Unfortunately I didn’t read the instructions for the installation of Fedora on the Amahi installation page!  I should have added a software repository for Amahi during the installation.  I mistaken thought that it wouldn’t matter and that I’d be able to add the software repository address after Fedora was up and running – you can’t!  You can read these instructions which I didn’t and caused me to have to reinstall Fedora from here.  You’ll kick yourself if you don’t read them!

If you install Fedora with the Amahi repository correctly by following the instructions, installation is so easy!  It’s just as easy as installing Windows Home Server (which is just like installing Windows XP).  I guess that it took around 30 minutes.

I won’t go into every step of the installation process, just make sure you read the instructions over at the Amahi site and you’ll have no problem whatsoever.

If you’re interested in the spec of the machine I’m now running Fedora 10 and Amahi on here you go.

Once everything was installed and up and running per the instructions I turned off DHCP on my router (read the instructions before doing this), set-up a few static IP addresses for the 3 PC’s at home and everything worked well.  Amahi uses OpenDNS which is a good choice for DNS IMHO but I think this is something that can be changed if you’d like.

One of the main reasons for me having a server at home is for back-ups.  These are easily set-up through Windows 7 which is the OS I’m using on all 3 PC’s at home at the moment.  It’s just a case of visiting the Control Panel, going to the Back-up and Restore page, selecting the network location and running through a wizard.  This isn’t as nice as the back-up system in Windows Home Server but it’s simple and does the job just as well.  I have created a back-ups folder of the server for each machine.  For example: \\hda\luke\backup and \\hda\mandy\backup etc.

The other reason I have a server at home is so that media files can be accessed from any PC that happens to be on and files aren’t duplicated across machines.  I have all of my music in a shared folder on the server so someone in the living room can be listening to something, I can jump on my PC and also have access to the same music folders.  The same could be done with photos, videos or any other files that need to be accessed from multiple machines.  The only issue I have found with Amahi is that because it is running on Fedora and not a Windows machine, the files and folders aren’t indexed in a way that Windows 7 understands.  This means that folders on the server can’t be included in “Libraries”.

Okay, so I think I’ll mention what I miss from Windows Home Server now.  There are a few things but nothing that I miss so much that I’d change back.

• I miss the nice Windows Home Server connector software.  It sits in your system tray and allows the user to do all kinds of cool things with the server vary easily through a nice interface.
• I’m going to miss shared folders being included in Windows 7 libraries.  I think this is something I’ll just have to live without because I can’t see how the functionality could be implemented under Linux.
• … I think that’s it!

What I won’t miss from Windows Home Server.

• I really won’t miss the OS screwing up after a month or two to the extent that I have to painstakingly recover data, format and reinstall.
• I also won’t miss having to worry about viruses on what was and still is a headless server that I like to set and forget about.

What I really like so far about Amahi.

• It seems to run so much better than Windows Home Server.  It must be much lighter on resources.
• I love that I can install web applications with one click though a web browser.  There are some great web apps in the repository and lots more on the way.  You can even make suggestions to the Amahi team for what you’d like to see there.
• The community (although I haven’t joined in on the forums yet) seems to be really good even for Linux n00bs like me.
• It makes you feel like a proper geek because you’re running a Linux server – how cool is that!?

What would I like to see in the future from Amahi?

• I’d love to see more web apps.  I do think that as the list grows, the repository that is accessed through a browser should be categorised and searchable.
• I’d like a Windows Home Server tray application program that could open, perhaps a browser window with no navigation options.  I could create one of these or something like using Prism for Firefox (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Prism) but unfortunately the web config page for Amahi doesn’t function correctly in Firefox. (EDIT: It does work fine in Firefox but I had one or two Greasemonkey scripts interfering with the “site”)

Want some screenshots?  I won’t disappoint.  Here are a selection of screens using two different themes.  Enjoy and please leave me comments and questions and also visit the Amahi site: www.amahi.org

http://www.lukeaddison.com/amahi-home-server-the-free-alternative-to-windows-home-server/

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Fedora 12

Fedora 12

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Fedora 12 preupgrade issues

If you are having issues with upgrading Fedora from 11 to 12 with error messages saying that your /boot partition is full *and* this walkthrough doesn't help I may have a solution for you:

1. Boot into your Fedora 11 kernel
2. remount /boot as read write (mount -o remount rw /boot)
3. move the file /boot/upgrade/install.img to unencrypted storage, I used a USB key
4. Reboot into the Fedora 12 upgrade kernel, when it errors out with a message claiming it can't find the installation image point it at the place you moved the install.img file to. 
5. Have a beer, the upgrade takes awhlie

The walkthrough on Fedora Project was for people preparing to upgrade, I however was stuck halfway though an upgrade so their solutions didn't help me.

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a2dp on Fedora 11 and Pulseaudio

*** UPDATE *** Fedora 12 has this same issue, this isn't surprising as this is likely going to be solved by the PulseAudio people

Earlier today I kind of got bluetooth audio (a2dp) working with Pulseaudio on Fedora 11, the solution can be found here. As that solution involved using a .asoundrc file with an ALSA device I was less than enthused.

A little research and a helpful push in the right direction and I figured out how to use the new-ish pulseaudio 'module-bluetooth-device'. To get this working in Fedora 11 without using ALSA:

1. Make sure you have the pulseaudio bluetooth package installed (yum install pulseaudio-module-bluetooth)
2. Download the attached perl script and mark it executable.
3. Pair your bluetooth device with your computer. Have it remember the PIN, etc.. 
4. Open a terminal and run the perl script 
5. When the script prompts you to connect the device use the bluetooth applet, command line, whatever you use to get hcitool to connect. Hit <enter>. 
6. The script will attempt to unload modules that interfere with getting a2dp working. 
7. Try to play something with sound. If you see the bluetooth device in pavucontrol under "Output Devices" but still don't have sound try setting your "Internal Audio" profile to "Off"

The details:

I was attempting to use the Dell BH200 headset that comes with some of the laptops in their XPS line. The headset paired and connected without any issues but refused to show up under "Output Devices" in pavucontrol. I learned that pulseaudio bluetooth support wasn't installed by default on all Fedora 11 machines so I went yummed the correct package. After uncommenting the 'module-bluetooth-discover' module in
/etc/pulse/default.pa stuff was still broken, just differently.

It turns out that the pulse people prefer to default devices to the HSP/HFP profile which is used for monaural telephone conversations. For some reason when pulse sees that my headphones are A2DP capable it tries to change profiles and ends up just disconnecting them instead. When I connected the bluetooth device it would show up under "Output Devices" but disappear after a few seconds, no sound would work in the interim. Catching it and changing the profile before it had a chance to error out didn't help.

I guess the bluetooth-device module works just fine if you tell it exactly what you want (A2DP), and that the 'discover' module was the culprit. My script just unloads the discover module long enough for the user to connect the device and then sets the correct profile before exiting.

I'm not sure why the pulse people have things set up this way and I'm not sure why Fedora hasn't made this automagic. Hopefully this script will be helpful to someone else.

Click here to download:

bh200-a2dp.pl (2 KB)

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Untitled

Blog entry: Bringing Hulu content to my Fedora 11 desktop. Sweet! http://ping.fm/wTn0F

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লোকাল ডিভিডিরম থেকে ফিডোরা লিনাক্সে প্যাকেজ ইনস্টল করা

আপনার নিকট ফিডোরা লিনাক্স ডিভিডি থাকলে সেখান থেকে বিভিন্ন প্যাকেজ ইনস্টল করতে পারবেন yum এর সাহায্যে। এজন্য ডিভিডি ড্রাইভে ডিভিডি ঢুকিয়ে দিন। তারপর localinstall অপশনসহ yum কমান্ড চালান। ধরা যাক আপনি যে ডিভিডি প্রবেশ করিয়েছেন তা /media/Fedora লোকেশনে মাউন্ট হয়েছে। তাহলে সেই ডিভিডি থেকে কোনো প্যাকেজ ইনস্টল করার জন্য কমান্ড হবে নিচের মতো:

# yum localinstall /media/Fedora/Packages/aspell-it-*
Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
Setting up Local Package Process
Examining /media/Fedora/Packages/aspell-it-2.2_20050523-3.fc11.i586.rpm:
50:aspell-it-2.2_20050523-3.fc11.i586
Marking /media/Fedora/Packages/aspell-it-2.2_20050523-3.fc11.i586.rpm
to be installed
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package aspell-it.i586 50:2.2_20050523-3.fc11 set to be updated
--> Processing Dependency: aspell >= 12:0.60 for package: aspell-it
--> Running transaction check
---> Package aspell.i586 12:0.60.6-5.fc11 set to be updated
--> Finished Dependency Resolution

Dependencies Resolved

================================================================================
 Package          Arch        Version                       Repository     Size
================================================================================
Installing:
 aspell-it        i586        50:2.2_20050523-3.fc11
/media/Fedora/Packages/aspell-it-2.2_20050523-3.fc11.i586.rpm
                                                                          2.0 M
Installing for dependencies:
 aspell           i586        12:0.60.6-5.fc11              fedora        947 k

Transaction Summary
================================================================================
Install      2 Package(s)
Update       0 Package(s)
Remove       0 Package(s)

Total size: 3.0 M
Total download size: 947 k
Is this ok [y/N]: y


উপরের কমান্ডে আমরা aspell-it প্যাকেজ ইনস্টল করতে বলেছি। শেষে * চিহ্ন ব্যবহার করায় একাধিক প্যাকেজ ইনস্টল হতে পারে। একদম নির্দিষ্ট কোনো প্যাকেজ ইনস্টল করতে চাইলে সেই প্যাকেজের নাম হুবহু উল্লেখ করতে হবে। এজন্য আগেই ডিভিডি থেকে সেই  প্যাকেজের নাম দেখে নেয়া ভাল।

এভাবে লোকাল ডিভিডি থেকে yum এর মাধ্যমে ইনস্টল করার সুবিধা হলো এর ফলে yum সেই প্যাকেজের নির্ভরশীলতা যাচাই করে দেখবে এবং প্রয়োজনমতো সেগুলো প্রথমে ডিভিডিতে ও পরে অন্যান্য রিপজিটরিতে খুঁজে দেখবে। প্রয়োজনমতো সুবিধাজনক রিপজিটরি থেকে সেই প্যাকেজ ডাউনলোড ও ইনস্টল করা হবে।

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Ubuntu & Me

Image by Diana Lili M via Flickr

Let me first point out that I am a recent convert to Linux. I, like many others, was a die-hard fan of Windows, which I believe is due to shear laziness (Linux requires a little love, now and then to get it to do some of the things you want it to). Anyway, last year I was having problems with my laptop -- mostly due to my ignorance of computer operating systems -- and I was getting tired of getting my computer fixed. Also, I did not want to switch from Windows XP over to Vista, because of all the negative reviews I had been hearing. So I decided to be daring and switch to Linux.

At the time, I was working in a book store so I had access to literally dozens of books on computers: operating systems, hardware configurations, databases, programming languages, et. al. Also, there were a plethora of computer nerds working there, and just about every one of them doted on Linux. So, after perusing several 10-pound books, I took a leap of faith and bought one on Fedora Core 6 (which, coincedently, had a disk with the operating system in the back).

Migrating to Fedora Core 6 6 was a challenge, to say the least (lots of configuration screens to go through). However, even though I knew not what I was doing, I managed it quite successfully. I enjoyed using the GNOME GUI for a while. Then, for reasons I don't recall, I reinstalled FC6 using KDE. I liked that GUI much better, because it had better games on it, and we all know that you can't have a computer without some kick ass games to play. And since I was to stupid to figure out how to install an application like Wine, I had to make do with whatever came with the chosen GUI. Also -- any of you readers who are familiar with Linux can testify to this -- both desktop environments have their own set of applications, most of which are native only to one interface. Therefore, being totally ignorant of my new OS, I again reinstalled the software in order to play ther other games -- see a pattern here?

Now, going back to my educated decision on which operating system to choose, I neglected to pay attention to the fact that, being open source, all Linux distros are either continually being updated, or they are only being updated for a set period of time. (Do you see where I'm going here?) Well, a few weeks ago I tried numerous times -- in vain -- to run updates. Finally, remembering an old acquaintances suggestion -- which I had previously ignored -- I downloaded Ubuntu 8.04. The reason for going with 8.04 instead of 9.04 was because it is being maintained longer.

So. After about 30 minutes of jacking with my CD drive I finally downloaded and copied Ubuntu. After reading through everything on the website, to say I was thrilled would be an understatement. But, being Mr. Murphy's favorite plaything, luck was not on my side -- I couldn't validate or install my download. Never fear, though, because I was desperate I requested a "free" CD. Now the first thing I will brag on Ubuntu about is the fact that it took about a week to get my copy (the website says 6 to 8 weeks).

Being the impatient, ADD-afflicted freak I am, I immediately turned on my laptop and popped in the disk -- installation was as easy as one, two, three. Now I can check my Twitter account every ten seconds, email and my Facebook profile every ten minutes, and watch my FriendFeed updates constantly update in the lower right-hand corner of my screen continuously.

However, all this took some tweaking to accomplish, but being so user-friendly, Ubuntu makes it easy. If I have a question about how to install a new app, or a plug-in -- which I always do -- help is only a few keystrokes away. Also, I am easily able to update at any time.

• Why I chose GNU/Linux (internetling.com)
• Vista Sucks (sciencetext.com)
• Linux Newbie, You Have Options. (daniweb.com)
• The Perfect Desktop - Kubuntu 9.04 (slumpedoverkeyboarddead.com)
• Gnome Shell - Your Next Desktop Environment (maketecheasier.com)
• Gnome Vs KDE? That it? (lockergnome.com)
• The Great Software List for Linux (menson.wordpress.com)
• 5 Little Useful Sticky Notes For Linux (makeuseof.com)
• Do one thing, and do it well: 40 years of UNIX (crunchgear.com)
• Best way to change you GNOME Desktop look (techie-buzz.com)

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Skype 2.1 Latest Version is out for Linux

Skype has recently released their latest release, Skype 2.1 beta for Linux. Until recently Skype was available for Fedora 7 only. Though it was able to be used on Fedora 11 also. Now they have released a version for Fedora 9 and Fedora 10+ which can be installed in Fedora 11 also. For Ubuntu users the release is for Ubuntu 8.04 and Ubuntu 8.10. They have also released Skype for 64 bit processor also, but for Ubuntu users only. All other Linux users can download the latest Skype 2.1 beta from this link: http://www.skype.com/download/skype/linux/choose/

This release comes with high quality video and super wideband audio that have been exciting features of Windows and Mac version. This release is quite important for Linux platforms since it supports Pulseaudio.

What is new in this release?

• Skype's SILK codec for outstanding sound quality
• High Quality Video
• PulseAudio
• Send SMS messages
• Organise your contacts with contact groups
• Improvements to chat (typing indicator, new emoticons and message editing)

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Chibi Leonidas wallpaper

via flickr.com

a wallpaper for Fedora 11

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Fedora-tan

via pixiv.net

Asi si me paso a rpm

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