When Amahi seems like a bad idea

[t800]

Firstly in fairness to those who have put a lot of work into this project I should point out I think its a very good idea. If you have a spare machine or want to replace a WHS its a winner. This is not a rant but my personal experience of trying to put a square peg in a round hole. By sharing this experience I hope it will help others trying to do a similar thing or someone may see a better solution.

My home made server is a monster that has evolved over the years as necessity is the mother of invention, if in a Heath Robinson fashion LOL. But very secure. So I have this SuSE64 11v1 XEN (VM) kernel running in Xen an Astero ASG and another SuSE 11v0 machine running all the LAMP and mail server in an AMD 2x64 machine with 3gb of RAM and JOBD. Works, but messy at times and email box is hardly used, Amahi seemed like a good idea to replace it.

I first install Amahi as a Xen machine or VM, the snag is the XEN kernel requires a network bridge and Amahi could resolve DCHP riddle of the other machines. After another install using the top level domain and static addressing and little router felting I had web facing plugins and windows could find the SMB side. But no luck getting the NFS in client or Server working.

So I bit the bullet and torn out the hard drive and decided Amahi was the way to go. Fedora should be able to cope with a Scalix mail server and sftp and NFS. I configured another hard drive and installed it as per the instructions on the tin. The problem was I have two cascaded routers, the server on the first and the other machine on the second. I never could get Amahi to DCHP anything on the second router and spent a long time googling different configurations. I gave the 2nd router and windoze found hda and all was well. But no outward facing website from amahi as the address was all screwed up. So I tried again using the top level domain which worked for the side but failed with Windoze. Okay no matter back to a default configuration and internal domain. Happy with that now lets get NFS working, 14hrs of hacking about, no luck

So back putting the machine back together and back to a XEN version of Amahi... In the control it shows you what machines are installed and running. So I deleted the profile with the top level domain name and decided to change the IP and remake it. The first problem is I couldn't find a link to build a new profile (red haze descents over the brain). Then I remembered 'www.amahi.org/system/new', ahh ha type in IP... domain name invaild... try.. domain invaild... it was bloody valid yesterday

From my original spec of a do it all Amahi with mail server, sftp and NFS was reduced to a humble Amahi with NFS for my linux machine descended into mission impossible... invalid domain so I cant restore what I had working. Perhaps its was a bad idea

But I'm open to any ideas ??? (Please note: There is no such thing as idiot proof, as there are big and better idiots in the world, like me, LOL)

[bigfoot65]

Hello,

We recently launched a new web site and there have been some small issues that have been since resolved. To create a new profile, go to https://www.amahi.org/system/new but only after you have logged in. You will see the setting you need to provide there. I have just tested it and it is working.

Now there is some error checking added so certain things may not work as it did before. For instance, 1-254 are the only valid IP addresses for your machine with Amahi. Is there something specific that I am missing here?

I am running a mail and file server together no problem. I have had NFS working in the past, but don't use it now as Samba is sufficient for me.

Sorry if I misunderstood your request.

[rgmhtt]

Currently Amahi is rather limited in DHCP services. I have NOT looked at DHCP forwarding, so I suspect there are problems there. Amahi only configures ONE DHCP zone, that for its subnet, and you CAN't alter this without altering the script. Which I have done. I will be working on mods to the Amahi DHCP, and would be interested in this particular challenge. It would need to be addressed if we add WINS support across subnets.

There is a pretty decent email solution for Amahi: http://wiki.amahi.org/index.php/Amahi_Mail_System I have been running it for a year. But I am trying to add mailman, and this is turning out to be 'challenging' I am NOT getting any good guidance from either the mailman or postfix mailing lists. Can't figure out how to use the STANDARD mailman/postfix integration, as we have integrated Postfix and SQL.

I have NEVER used NFS. I guess I got burned bad by it back in the '90s. Dropped UDP frames and corrupted data. If I want to access data from Linux, I tend to use Samba. But I also use gFTP a lot and do bulk moves with SSH -e -a "rsync ...."

[t800]

Thanks you both for the reply. Firstly I tried bigfoot idea of creating a new user profile... umph it still refuses my top level domain name I really really really wished I had never delete the one with it that worked. I'm really not sure if to spend the time hacking it to my domain of abandon in favour of an easier route of trying to compile greypool into my existing linux? Is there a refence artical on domain name hacking Amahi ??? As I have no working install now this is a bit of a show stopper

Thanks rgmhtt for the link. It has possibilities. My concern is spam or content filtering as I think this system requires system rights as mail@localhost so the filter doesn't see the senders ip in the first line so it appears from a local user not the spammer. THus making it trick to blackhole know sender lookups. But the artical is a useful resouce on how Fedora does it.

If I can get Amahi running on a top level I will have a look into how the DCHP works. It may be an idea to look into the install to see what the Amahi repo brings to the party. Scalix has an older fedora verson of there mailbox. This what be a nice one to include in the Amahi addons.

As for the NFS problem, jackpal may have give me a clue with the portmap. I suspect Fedora 12 may not be using NFS4. Personally I trust NFS over SMB which is very old new and messy to mount. But respect the fact that NFS has give you a bit of a time of it. But I do like to map my existing linux machines folders as intergal part of my user directory tree. And keeps certern folders out of sight from windows to screwing around with them as I have been burned on that one in the past

Many thanks again

[rgmhtt]

Thanks rgmhtt for the link. It has possibilities. My concern is spam or content filtering as I think this system requires system rights as mail@localhost so the filter doesn't see the senders ip in the first line so it appears from a local user not the spammer. THus making it trick to blackhole know sender lookups. But the artical is a useful resouce on how Fedora does it.

Well I have all the spam and av stuff running in my setup, but I am NOT conversant enough to know about your concern.

If I can get Amahi running on a top level I will have a look into how the DCHP works. It may be an idea to look into the install to see what the Amahi repo brings to the party. Scalix has an older fedora verson of there mailbox. This what be a nice one to include in the Amahi addons. /quote]

I use to run Scalix and gave it up for what Bigfoot65 has setup here with my testing help. The Scalix mailbox database gave me lots of troubles over the years that I ran it. It was good to shut it down last year finally.

[t800]

I use to run Scalix and gave it up for what Bigfoot65 has setup here with my testing help. The Scalix mailbox database gave me lots of troubles over the years that I ran it. It was good to shut it down last year finally.

Thats very noble of you, so how is it working out? It has tweaked my interest to give it a try. I setup scalix over 7 years ago, I think I may have updated 4 years ago Back then I liked the webmin setup so much I made a drive img and ran it on a Xen or (VM style) kernel. Which is hand as there is just the one small drive image to backup or restore. I had some really heavy spam problems with the native setup I used to run. So I stuck an Astreo box or ASG xen machine in front and that resolved the spam and intrusion problems. I get around 390 spam mail drops a day, a mail server with no spam control sounds about as useful as an ashtray on a motorcycle LOL So what do you use for spam control ???

[rgmhtt]

I use to run Scalix and gave it up for what Bigfoot65 has setup here with my testing help. The Scalix mailbox database gave me lots of troubles over the years that I ran it. It was good to shut it down last year finally.

Thats very noble of you, so how is it working out? It has tweaked my interest to give it a try. I setup scalix over 7 years ago, I think I may have updated 4 years ago Back then I liked the webmin setup so much I made a drive img and ran it on a Xen or (VM style) kernel. Which is hand as there is just the one small drive image to backup or restore. I had some really heavy spam problems with the native setup I used to run. So I stuck an Astreo box or ASG xen machine in front and that resolved the spam and intrusion problems. I get around 390 spam mail drops a day, a mail server with no spam control sounds about as useful as an ashtray on a motorcycle LOL So what do you use for spam control ???

Basically I really like it. There are some important shortfalls that Bigfoot65 is addressing. First is maintaining the SQL tables for Postfix. Right now you use phpMyadmin for this which requires a decent SQL skill set (I go back to R:Base on Dos 2.1 for my start with SQL). Bigfoot65 is taking DaDaBix and creating a front end to the tables. I have used it and found only one bug and a couple cosmetic items.

The install is NOT a single click and there is no way to update/replace your cert. The former is not too bad, but don't make errors on the script, you ARE asked at each step if your entry is right. The later will get you after you have run it for a year (the cert is created with a one year lifetime).

As for spam control, I have full Spamassassin running. I get my spam delivered, but it moves right to my Junk box. One of my sons uses the Squirrelmail interface for his account and has set up a script to delete all of his spam at login. Clamav is running plus a number of other tools, take a look at the tutorial to see what we have running here.

I finally found the time to look into port 587 for mail delivery, as it is often a problem when I am on the road that the WiFi I am connecting through has port 25 blocked. Boy was it easy to enable port 587, and we will at least add the instructions to this on the Wiki, if not just have it working out of the box with both ports 25 and 587 for mail delivery.

I am also working at integrating Mailman. I had it working and went to rebuild my system from scratch to see if my instructions are on, but my new server is getting a kernel panic on block(0,0). I am concerned that I have a disk problem and have asked for help on the Fedora list, no guidance yet...

Oh as far as turning of DNS, I have updated my bug 681 with a change to hdactl to get at least /etc/resolv.conf right. I will know after I rebuild my system, if I have everything done now to disable DNS for this system.

[lou1z]

i like amahi and think it has a long and promising future. it's a great way to get linux into the home also and i wouldn't be without it now. it just runs!
however, it's still a young concept and asking it to do everything, from catering from inexperienced to linux guru's is a very tall order. i suppose it's evolving as it was originally designed to be a hda for an internal network. now it has streaming, vpn, proxy etc and even looking at a mail server etc.
currently, it's a little limited on the gui side of things for the uber geeks but absolutely fine for the novice or those that don't want to get involved in the cli.
i'm not sure i'd ever run it with mail etc on it as you are getting into the realms of sbs or clearos which are far more mature platforms for this with security in mind.
it would be great if amahi ever got to that level as you would have all the security with the ease of use. a very tall order indeed but everything is possible.

[t800]

Hi lou1z, When I originally wrote this article I was frustrated to the hell with integrating it into the role of my original server functions. The setup had worked faithfully for years until suddenly the hardware gave out. As a fallback I used started to use Amahi as it was intended when my main work machine had RAID failure. To make matters worse the drive replacements failed within days, almost everything was lost. And I sit here grateful and pleased that it worked as advertised. All data is back to were it needs to be, and a big thanks to all those that made it possible. One happy convert LOL

[crxtasy12]

The problem was I have two cascaded routers, the server on the first and the other machine on the second. I never could get Amahi to DCHP anything on the second router and spent a long time googling different configurations.

What kind of routers are you using?