Amahi Forums

Hey Gents.

I've recently installed Amahi on Gigabyte D525TUD using the Express 5.4 x64 - headless installer (Expert installer sent me in reboot loop ) - on a IDE attached 160GB disk as system disk. I'm not using Amahi as DHCP server because my current router - a Zyxel P-2602HW-D1A, has lower power consumption and does the DHCP job fine I've read across the wiki and forum for 3 days straight now and im way in over my head So i'm posting this thread because i need specific help.

Here goes:
I'm not able to use the short url's thus not being able to use apps. I'm not sure what i should direct where. I can access the HDA dashboard fine from any comp on the LAN through 192.168.1.15 which is the IP i've assigned to the box. Samba shares works fine too - don't know if that matters.

My next problem is adding additional hdd's. I don't want shares to use whats left on the system disk. Can it be removed or configured not to be used?
I want to use the Greyhole. I've bought a new hdd which is installed and working. Then i'll move data from my old hdd's and add them one by one to the pool. The new disk is mounted as /var/hda/files/ - can i mount the rest of the disks to the same location (/var/hda/files/) or should i remount the first one as /var/hda/drives/sda1 and the next as sdb1 and so on, to make Greyhole work as intended?


If there are easy solutions to the following issues it would be great. I havent put much time into them yet. My main problems are the issues above.
I need the box to hibernate or suspend. Which ever is easiest to configure.
I need to be able to use WoL.
I need to be able to access it from outside. FTP and gallery i think. Right now i'm directed to my routers login page.

I hope it makes sense. Thanks in advance for any help

/daniel

Hey Gents.
I've recently installed Amahi on Gigabyte D525TUD using the Express 5.4 x64 - headless installer (Expert installer sent me in reboot loop ) - on a IDE attached 160GB disk as system disk. I'm not using Amahi as DHCP server because my current router - a Zyxel P-2602HW-D1A, has lower power consumption and does the DHCP job fine I've read across the wiki and forum for 3 days straight now and im way in over my head So i'm posting this thread because i need specific help.

Here goes:
I'm not able to use the short url's thus not being able to use apps. I'm not sure what i should direct where. I can access the HDA dashboard fine from any comp on the LAN through 192.168.1.15 which is the IP i've assigned to the box. Samba shares works fine too - don't know if that matters.
/daniel

You are not able to use short urls as you have disabled the DHCP and probably the DNS on the HDA. There are tradeoffs when you do this; see http://www.amahi.org/support/faq#is-dhc ... r-required.

My next problem is adding additional hdd's. I don't want shares to use whats left on the system disk. Can it be removed or configured not to be used?
I want to use the Greyhole. I've bought a new hdd which is installed and working. Then i'll move data from my old hdd's and add them one by one to the pool. The new disk is mounted as /var/hda/files/ - can i mount the rest of the disks to the same location (/var/hda/files/) or should i remount the first one as /var/hda/drives/sda1 and the next as sdb1 and so on, to make Greyhole work as intended?
/daniel

Yes you can add additional drives and move your shares to them. However, you cannot mount them to the same location. I would recommend you add them as you indicated. You can then configure Greyhole to use those drives. See http://wiki.amahi.org/index.php/Adding_ ... o_your_HDA for more info.

If there are easy solutions to the following issues it would be great. I havent put much time into them yet. My main problems are the issues above.
I need the box to hibernate or suspend. Which ever is easiest to configure.
I need to be able to use WoL.
I need to be able to access it from outside. FTP and gallery i think. Right now i'm directed to my routers login page.

I hope it makes sense. Thanks in advance for any help

/daniel

Some of these requirements cannot be done out of the box. It would require additional customization on your part. You might find help here or via google.

I believe if you have the HDA hybernate or go to sleep, you will lose some functionality of your server. It is designed to run 24/7. If you don't use it for for DHCP, you may be able to use a WOL program to wake it up though.

As for outside access, see http://wiki.amahi.org/index.php/Hosting_a_website on how to make an app accessible outside the network. This method only works for one app at a time though. You could install and use Amahi Web Apps Proxy (http://www.amahi.org/apps/amahi-web-apps-proxy) to allow access to all apps.

The best way to access your HDA from outside for files is to use VPN. There is an Amahi app called OpenVPN ALS and is a clientless VPN (http://www.amahi.org/apps/openvpn-als. This would be more secure and easier than configuring an FTP. Amahi does not currently provide that functionality out of the box.

The Amahi wiki and forums offer a lot of guidance for many things. If you have anything you can add to it for some of this, please do so. You can login using your amahi.org credentials.

Hope this helps shed some light.

Thanks for the prompt answer. It is all falling into place now Theoretically that is... I think i've figures out the WoL thing and the suspend / hibernate thing is - afaik - a Fedora issue. I'll post an update when and if i get it working.
As for the short url's and DHCP issue i need to know if there is an other way to reach apps other than short url's. It seems like my router is not getting a WAN IP when not in routing mode. I think i need to RTFM

Thanks for the support

Great. The other method for accessing apps is http://appname.your.domain. This is set to home.com by default unless you have changed it.

Good luck and keep us posted.

A minor note: you can have your router dish out the DHCP and give your HDA as DNS server and this will resolve short urls (as long as the domain matches what the HDA is programmed).

A minor note: you can have your router dish out the DHCP and give your HDA as DNS server and this will resolve short urls (as long as the domain matches what the HDA is programmed).

Thanks As I said i'd be reading the manual to the router soon
I'll report back.

Ohh... I had to reinstall Amahi because I 'accidently' messed up the IP and the router wouldn't recognice the MAC adr. thou it had the correct IP?! (RTFM soon). Anyways I'd just add that when mounting the new disk which is half full already, I had to use on the subdirectories in existing shares. Otherwise they'd be read-only... I'm learning all the time

Cheers
/daniel

Hi,

My question is similar.

I have my drives mounted as follows:
Pooled Status Location Total space Free space (%)
Working / 9.8 GB 6.4 GB 65%
Working /home 42.4 GB 42.2 GB 99%
x Working /var/hda/files 916.9 GB 282.8 GB 31%
x Working /var/hda/files/drives/drive2 916.9 GB 285 GB 31%
x Working /var/hda/files/drives/drive3 1.8 TB 1.8 TB 99%

The root and home folders are two partitions on an SSD disk, and the remaining three lines are three different disks.

The first disk I added to the system was the disk mounted on /var/hda/files. This disk currently contains quite a few files.

From what I understand from the post, this partition should be "re-mounted" as /var/hda/files/drives/drive1 ?

What are the advantages/disadvantages of doing this, and how do I do it without loosing some of the files that are only on this disk? Can I just change the mountpoint in fstab, or does that mess up greyhole? I was planning on perhaps making a "greyhole copy" of the shares on the first 916.9 GB disk

(through clicking on 1 extra copy for all my shares - I don't have extra copies for all my shares, and don't know which of the shares utilize the first disk, but clicking on making an extra copy should ensure that all files on the first disk are copied to either drive2 or drive3, and after that I could remove the first disk from greyhole, and format it and remount it as drive1)?

Like da9els, I also had some problems adding my third hard-drive since it was not entirely clear from the post whether or not the new drives could all be mounted on /var/hda/files (I am relatively new to Linux). If the second hard-drive should be mounted as drive1 instead of /var/hda/files, the "Adding second harddrive" post should explain this.

Also, I think one other issue which is confusing to users from the "windows-world" is how you transfer something to, for example, /var/hda/files/music , and the files actually physically end up in /var/hda/files/drives/drive2. This "file-shortcut" (symlink?) is somewhat hard to understand. (When I have transferred files to my Movies-folder under /var/hda/files/Movies and since I have mounted the way I have - I have no idea on which of my drives the files actually end up (Location under shares in HDA says /var/hda/files/Movies)). This other post describes someone else with some of the same problems as I describe here:

http://forums.amahi.org/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1832

Perhaps this could be explained in an info-box on the local hda-webpage, so it is easier for newbies such as myself to understand this?

By the way - thanks a lot for offering this great, free product!

Just a little update and some more questions

Now I've got short url's working by adding IP's and name to the host file. Simple and flawless.
I haven't looked into WoL yet but an update will come.

My only problem atm is that when i move files to the storage pool - consistent of the 4 SATA-connected drives - i can see that the IDE-connected disk i use as system drive is used as a sort of buffer. The files are apparently stored out side the pool temporaly and then moved to the desired disk. This havent been an issue until recently when i began to use Transmission. The Transmission torrent folder is assigned to the pool, but when i add or remove a torrent i can see that it is the IDE-connected system disk that is affected.

To sketch things up, this i what my setup looks like:
1 x 160GB PATA disk used as system disk. Non-pooled. Amahi x64 Express installed.
4 x SATA disks used for shares. Pooled. Added one-by-one after install.

My question is how do i move the data stored on the system disk to the pooled area? And will there be any issues if i reinstall Amahi - I've got at hold of an old 16GB IDE SSD ? It's just to disconnect the pooled disks and add them after install and recreate the same shares and all data will still be there, right?

I hope it makes sense

EDIT: Ohh yeah. Is it possible to change the number of mounts between disk checks? The box isn't on 24/7 so it would be would be cool if it would only do a disk check every 90th mount or so.


/daniel

Just a little update and some more questions
My question is how do i move the data stored on the system disk to the pooled area?

Short answer: you don't, greyhole does... Longer answer: I assume the problem is that you run Transmission on the HDA and have it put it's files in something like '/var/hda/files/transmission'. In that case you are NOT using the share but the directory where it is mounted. The difference is that in the latter case you are not using Samba and greyhole parses the samba log's to see if it's got work waiting. The files should get moved on the next 'greyhole--fsck', scheduled every night at 24:00. But you said the box isn't always on and 24:00 sounds like a good time to have it off.... If you want to have greyhole move your files as soon as possible you should mount your shares on the HDA itself (http://wiki.amahi.org/index.php/Mount_Shares_Locally) and have Transmission use that.

And will there be any issues if i reinstall Amahi - I've got at hold of an old 16GB IDE SSD ?

Like you said, greyhole by default uses the system disk as a 'landing zone' for incoming files. 16 GB is very, very small. If you want to do this you should move your shares to another drive.

EDIT: Ohh yeah. Is it possible to change the number of mounts between disk checks? The box isn't on 24/7 so it would be would be cool if it would only do a dick check every 90th mount or so.

Can't answer that... But maybe you shouldn't try to 'outsmart' Amahi and just leave it on 24/7. Amahi is really designed with that in mind. If you let your drives sleep after some time of inactivity, energy consumption will be really low.


HTH,
Richard

PS: I would not like Amahi to do a dick check, ever...

...In that case you are NOT using the share but the directory where it is mounted. The difference is that in the latter case you are not using Samba and greyhole parses the samba log's to see if it's got work waiting. .... If you want to have greyhole move your files as soon as possible you should mount your shares on the HDA itself (http://wiki.amahi.org/index.php/Mount_Shares_Locally) and have Transmission use that.

Makes sense. I just figured when i marked the Torrent-share as pooled it would do so by default.

If you want to do this you should move your shares to another drive.

I need more specific info on that.

But maybe you shouldn't try to 'outsmart' Amahi and just leave it on 24/7.

Good point. I'll have to play around with hdparm a bit.

PS: I would not like Amahi to do a dick check, ever...

ROFL! Non-wife-approved server-'service'. (My spell-checking is obviously not set to English )


Thanks for the enlightenments and happt new year

/daniel