Amahi as a part time server

[stevenparham]

Hi there I wonder if someone is able to tell me if I could use Amahi as a server but not have the PC it's installed on all of the time?

I have an onlder TV in the liviing room I would like to use to back up photos and videos etc and sometime use as a media streamer too. I don't want it on all the time as it can be a bit noisy. I thought Amahi would be a great candidate for due to the ease of use but I'm not sure if my network would still work if the Amahi server was switched off. For example would my laptop and phone still be able to connect to my wireless network if the server takes over dhcp duty.

Tbh I don't fully understand what DHCP does but if if Amahi isn't suitable for my purpose or requires a lot of fiddling about to achieve what I want it would be better to know upfront!

Thanks for your help
Steve

[bigfoot65]

Yes you can use it as a part time server.

You would need to leave your DHCP server as the router, but assign the HDA as the DNS provider to use apps. When the HDA is off, you would need to switch the router back to using it's normal DNS server. You cannot make one the primary and other alternate as DNS randomly chooses whether it uses the primary or alternate server address. Does that make sense?

See disable DHCP server on HDA. Not there are some trade offs for not using the HDA as the DHCP server.

I personally would say if you only want a part time server, Amahi may not be the best fit. It's designed to be up 24/7 as are most servers. You might consider something like OpenMediaVault.

[stevenparham]

Thanks for the response bigfoot. Sounds like a bit of a chore to achieve quite what I want so i'll think again

[bigfoot65]

No problem. Happy to help. Please let us know if we can be of further assistance.

[kcgr]

I set mine up as a part timer to backup my original NAS. I made it a part timer since I'm still learning about linux.

I diasbled the DHCP server. The main NAS uses WOL in a cron script to wake it every saturday at 10am, then backups are rsync'd to mirror the main server, then cron is used on the amahi box to shut it down at 5pm.

I need to upgrade it to Amahi 7, but it's still working faithfully, so I'm not touching it for now.

[bigfoot65]

This is something that would serve the community well in the wiki. Would you be able to add some guidance? I was thinking a basic scenario describing this use case and the scripts that make it all work.

There is some interest in having part time servers and this would be a good starting point.

[kcgr]

OK, I'll put something together in the wiki. Hopefully it'll be useful.

[bigfoot65]

Thanks. I am sure it will be as I have seen a few other users trying to make their severs part time.

[kcgr]

OK, I made a wiki. I should have named the title :Amahi as Part Time NAS or Backup NAS. Perhaps you can tweak the title so it appears Amahi relevant. Either I cannot, or I'm overlooking the obvious.

https://wiki.amahi.org/index.php/Part_T ... Backup_NAS

thanks for the support on this forum. I know I've learned a bunch.

[bigfoot65]

Thanks I will take a look and adjust as needed.

I see this is for Ubuntu. Will need some adjustments for Amahi 7 on Fedora 19. I will make it more prominent in the article.