Is PBA broken?

[drock]

Clonezilla has been packaged as an Amahi App. See http://www.amahi.org/apps/upcoming.

I did consider beta testing specifically for CloneZilla. However, this is a production unit I am building and I do not relish using it as a "beta" in future endeavors and signing only for the CloneZilla functionality is well, self serving. I do have extra hardware laying around (3 or 4 older PC's) that I could dedicate for beta testing, but right now, I am pressed for time with other projects.

I'll stick with the Clonezilla live CD for now and wait for a more "official" release of the CloneZilla Amahi app.

Thanks for the help everyone.


Regards,
Dave

[drock]

Well,
I am not posting this to start any upsets nor slander the developers, supporters, or users of Amahi. I am posting this to provide to you honest non-biased feedback on the initial installation and evaluation of Amahi as a home based server solution.

1. Initial installation went without a hitch with no error messages and/or issues.
2. After installation, I attempted to get PBA working with backups. Not only was PBA missing (wasnt installed), it appears that NO backup solution is provided with the release version of AMAHI; which, as we all know one of the major selling points is to provide bare-metal backups.
3. After installation, I attempted to setup WebVNC and again, it does not work "out of the box". This is not necessarily an AMAHI issue, but more with Internet Explorer as permissions prevent unsigned ActiveX controls from installing/running.
4. I followed the VNC instruction set to install VNC as a complete server and use the "tightVNC" as a client to run my headless server. I was able to get this working after a couple hours of messing with Fedora and its (all but annoying) keyring password storage policies.
5. After realizing I had no backup solution (which is the reason I installed Amahi in the first place), I decided to try and setup PBA. Their is realy no documentation on how to do this except for small "snippets" located on your user forum and in the wiki. Needless to say, it resulted in a PXE boot that half my PC's in the house where unable to use because the base distro (insert) does not support newer hardware. In short, it was useless to me.
6. I attempted to go outside the realm of Amahi and install PXE to boot CloneZilla live to perform my bare metal backups.

This is when I came to the realization that I had spent close to 2-days fiddling with a "seemingly no-hassle" open source "home" server and abandonded my efforts mid-stream.

I can tell you from a "users" standpoint that Amahi in its current state is neither "easy" nor is it "hassle free". I have jumped through more configuration hoops over the past 2 days than I have in the past 4 years of managing an Active Directory Domain. I realize that there are many issues that are beyond Amahi's control as inherently, it is based on 100% Open Source products and I completely understand the reprecussions of this. For this reason alone I would not choose (nor recommend) Amahi to anyone except a Linux hobiest (and I myself have been working with linux since the early 90's). Things break, get outdated, and are not maintained. Even if a working solution is provided in the short-term, all it would take is a "future" underlying package update to "break" some function of the system. I have seen this over and over again with linux and it is the reason why I have chosen commercial products for "real" buisness.

I for one wish you guys good luck with your efforts but as a non-biased user, I would highly recommend that in order to keep Amahi alive and flowing with new users, that you desperately need to work on its "advertised core function" and ensure that it works. Primarily, this means backups. Without this functioning "out-of-the-box", your user base will cease to grow.

Regards,
Dave

[frankincell]

I for one wish you guys good luck with your efforts but as a non-biased user, I would highly recommend that in order to keep Amahi alive and flowing with new users, that you desperately need to work on its "advertised core function" and ensure that it works. Primarily, this means backups. Without this functioning "out-of-the-box", your user base will cease to grow.

I second this opinion. For your future development path, core functionality should trump all others.
Easy Install, Easy Backup of all your home PC's, Easy Media Streaming and Easy File Sharing.

--Frankincell

Amazing multimedia and home integration
(yea I made that up on the fly and it needs work)

[bigfoot65]

That's a tall order for a free home server. However, that is what we hope to do.