First off, I don't have much experience with Linux, I'm sure that's part of my problem, but after a week of wrestling with Amahi I'm giving up on it.
First off what I was able to get to work out of the box:
Shares.
DNLA with my xbox and Media Center PCs.
DHCP routing (which I was concerned about, works without a hitch)
All fine and they made me excited about the rest of the features.
Now the problems:
VNC - the instructions in the Wiki are woefully inadequate. There are just too many assumptions in the wiki. Do this as root (okay, I can figure that out), change this in the home directory of the user (by the way the "." in front of a file means that it's a hidden file -- took a while to figure that out). Etc. I've spent days trying to get it so I could plug the HDA in headless and then run it from a remote desktop. I'm able to get it to work when I've got it plugged in to a monitor and keyboard. But anytime it's not connected I get an error (10061). And yes, after much work I do have it set up to log on a user automatically.
PBA - doesn't work. Period. Can't even access it from the HDA. After scouring the forums I discover it's temporarily broke (should be on the front page of the Amahi site) and needs to be installed via yum. I do this. Test it. Get to the log in screen on the computer I want to back-up and can't select it -- my usb keyboard doesn't work with the boot loader until I enable legacy devices in the BIOS. That does the trick (but am already worried--the backup program is that old) and I'm able to boot from the PBA but than my computer hangs part way through the boot - PBA is a no go - the code is too old. So no back-ups.
Shares, Back-ups, and VNC (the HDA needs to automatically set-up an ADMIN user with VNC enabled). All the other apps are a bonus but those three are core functions--a user really shouldn't have to log on as root and edit text files to get them up and going. It's frustrating because I know they do work for other people. I'm also certain that I can get them working but I've only got so much time and I'm not interested in mastering the Linux Shell (I know, saying something like that will bring out the Linux fanboys to flame me for being a stupid, lazy noob who isn't worthy... ).
Just some things to consider as you guys move forward on development--lock down the core functions. I'll keep an eye on the project and if it looks like progress is made in that direction I may give it another try. There's so much potential here and it would have been perfect for what I wanted but it just doesn't work. It makes me wonder if the reviewers really gave it a go or if they were already so experienced with Linux that they didn't see the potential problems.
About my system: it's an intel D945GCLF (atom 230) 1GB ram., 1.5 TB hard drive, Trendnet Gigabit ethernet card (onboard LAN disabled)
Reaching the frustation point
Re: Reaching the frustation point
Okay.
I got VNC working today. There are some lines in the vncservers file found in the sysconfig folder that need to be commented and edited to start the vncserver at boot. The instructions in the VNC wiki do not mention this. It's found in the instructions for webvnc.
Also one really needs more detail in the wiki. There are way too many assumptions about the user's linux knowledge. I have virtually none so one one says uncomment and and change something it would nice if instead it said something like open a terminal, type sudo and enter your root password, navigate to the file and type gedit <filename> to open and change it.
Seriously, this is that's the level of description that would be helpful to those who don't know linux. I tried to edit the file a half dozen times but couldn't because I didn't have permission to change it.
I got VNC working today. There are some lines in the vncservers file found in the sysconfig folder that need to be commented and edited to start the vncserver at boot. The instructions in the VNC wiki do not mention this. It's found in the instructions for webvnc.
Also one really needs more detail in the wiki. There are way too many assumptions about the user's linux knowledge. I have virtually none so one one says uncomment and and change something it would nice if instead it said something like open a terminal, type sudo and enter your root password, navigate to the file and type gedit <filename> to open and change it.
Seriously, this is that's the level of description that would be helpful to those who don't know linux. I tried to edit the file a half dozen times but couldn't because I didn't have permission to change it.
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