New Setup Tips I found useful!

[programit]

After many long weeks and numerous reinstallations I have finally got the basic system working
I have found most of the niggly little problems seem to be Fedora based more than Amahi - I personally will be glad if a Centos version is ever made available.

Anyway a few tricks I found over the last month and 6 installations ??? Follow this site instructions to the T and a few tips I found worked for me.

1) When initially installing Fedora I found it better to leave the ip address etc for eth0 as automatic until everything is installed. Then go in to the System->Administration->Network and Double click eth0 and change the Address to what you want. For me I changed this to 192.168.1.10 with subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 and because my router/modem is set to 192.168.1.1 that what the gateway is set to!
I had numerous network issues if I set the eth0 manually during setup on 2 different machines.

2)I then install the HDA Amihi system with hda-install ###### etc as per the regular instructions after which I let Fedora do a complete update! (System->Administration->Update System )

3)Before setting up anything, go into the AmihaHDA Setup and into the users panel. CHANGE THE PASSWORD of the initial user setup. This can be the same password as originally set but go through the motions of changing it. This fixes the SAMBA issue with file sharing and user access from some machine. I could see the shared folders but not access then because of access errors.

4) Turn off DHCP server on your router/modem if you wish to use Amahi DNS etc. You may find that some windows machines won't update their network connections properly, especially DHCP server address or DNS address. Won't log on to the Internet etc.
On the WINDOWS machine open a command prompt and type:

Code: Select all

ipconfig /release ipconfig /renew

This seems to clear out the settings and refresh the adapters with the correct ip addresses etc.
You can double check this through the networking tab on the HDA setup and verify the DHCP address allocations.

5)I then turned on remote desktop through System->Preferences->Internet and Network->Remote Desktop. I allowed view and control to users and unticked the "Ask for confirmation" This allows full access to the desktop if needed. Should note that the user HAS to be logged in. In case of computer reset or power outage etc. I configured fedora to auto login the main user. This can be done by editting /etc/gdm/custom.conf appending the following:

Code: Select all

[daemon] TimedLoginEnable=true TimedLogin=<Your-Username> TimedLoginDelay=15

This has to be done as root user.
Open Terminal type

Code: Select all

su - (Enter your root password) gedit /etc/gdm/custom.conf

This allows me to access the server via any computer and I can run the server headless basically.
On windows I use TightVNC viewer which seems to work okay on XP & Windows 7.

I also made mods to allow for root access via logon and for second network adapter. I'm still working on gateway stuff? Why Fedora doesn't allow root login is just silly.....(Its far easier to login as root to the GUI than type &^$%#% passwords every 2 seconds. Edit files direct, etc etc etc. - Sorry, PET HATE! )

Final thought are relatively positive. Fedora is quirky and definately not my primary choice for linux but it does work okay with this system. I've found the last few weeks very frustrating and almost gave up on this system, but the frustrations seem more related to Fedoras quirks than Amahi.
Come on a Centos version!!!

Hope this info helps those having minor issues during initial setup, and save a few frustrations... Cheers.

[moredruid]

if you run in terminal (not GUI) you can add your user account to the /etc/sudoers file with visudo. just add the following line in that file:
username ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL

the "sudo su -" command will then elevate your account to root. no password required.

not running as root in the GUI is a Good Thing (tm) IMO. too many critical processess are run as root user which opens up a whole can of worms with regards to security.