Reaching to truly *real* users!

[cpg]

So, we got this comment today in the blog.

I was really impressed by how professional this application looked until I tried it.

Absolutely great installation experience. The only minor drawback is having to get Fedora separately.

Great documentation on the installation process. After that things go downhill rapidly. Even an experienced admin on Linux and Windows can experience problems, and the documentation is almost nil.

Support via the forum seems to be an impossible task. Like any other forum you need to sign up. This seems to be an impossible task since there’s no link on the login for registration. I’ll bet the number of new members is non-existent!

Then I ran into the quirky problems. After hours of debugging of non-trivial problems I ran up against a stone wall in getting files on the server. Seems that the only directories I can get to on the server are Pictures and Books. Music, Docs, and Movies are not to be found!

Too bad. Lots of good work here, but it’s just unusable so far. And from what I can see so far, an inexperienced user is going to get frustrated real fast and go elsewhere.

Simply not ready for prime time.

A sobering reminder that we're not there yet for real/mainstream users.

This kind of feedback is what we need. It's much better to get this than simply if some users turn around a leave without giving a clue on what could be improved to make them love their Amahi server.

It'd be great if it were more actionable. What can we do to improve the situation?

• documentation: a couple of slide shows on how to install and how to use the server? screencasts? better/improved guides?
• out of the box experience: more thorough testing? like checklists of tests under varios platform, some sort of certification?
• ... what else?

[moredruid]

hum... modify the login page with the message that they can login using the same credentials they used for www.amahi.org

shares not being visible is a known Windows XP issue (reaching back from Win2k even, I did support for MS back then).
not to be completely unfair, but this sounds more than a rant than someone who has really tried it (especially when he states he's an experienced admin, at least that's what I get out of the text). He writes he's "debugging non-trivial problems" but doesn't state any. then he walks into a stone wall with file sharing. For all I know he has debugged "rm -rf /var/hda/files/Movies" (btw: kids, don't try that command at home )

I agree however with his almost last sentiment:
an inexperienced user is going to get frustrated real fast and go elsewhere.

not sure how fast that would really be, but frustrated yes, if things are not "easy" or working out of the box.

[relrobber]

i agree...not very useful as "feedback". did he try the irc channel? what were the non-trivial problems he spent hours on? no offer to help or to at least submit logfiles? this was a lashing out by a frustrated "user" looking for a quick fix to his file-sharing needs.

[cpg]

i would not call it a rant, but just frustration when something does not seem to work and powerelessness.

he was also very frustrated to not being able to log in here in the forums (still has not been able to).

my view is to take the most "user centric" view in this episode and figure what can we do to cross over to those users ...

[moredruid]

I was thinking about what I had to do, because I had some smb troubles too... I never mentioned them because it was trivial to modify, but still...

I created a new share, copied some files to it, and my gf wasn't able to overwrite those file. I tried modifying some user and group ownerships, but that didn't work nicely either. In the end I just made the directory (and subdirectories) word-writable, and it worked fine ever after.

[relrobber]

this is kinda on the same subject...i guess. why do you have to scroll all the way down the home page at Amahi.org to find a link to the forums? there should be a link under the 'Community' link at the top. there's not even a forum link on the page that the main 'Community' link takes you to.

[cpg]

good point.

let's put all the recommendations as new issues in the tracker, and that way we can bundle them we we get to it.

we just updated the install instructions with this overview presentation as a result of some brainstorming in this area.

this is kind of important. easy = good

[cpg]

done!

thanks for the bug reminder (bug #120).

forums is now the rightmost link under community, easy to reach

[GIJosh1516]

First...Thanks to the whole Amahi team, testers and devs alike.

As for the rant/feedback, I see both sides. I am an MS Admin, but also support various Red Hat boxes (DNS, FTP, etc), and my servers at home are all Red Hat/Fedora, can't beat open source! With the target audience being mainstream users, I think there is some guesswork in getting the Amahi server up and running purely off of the documentation with the advertised features.

The file shares, I too had the problems mentioned above, the books and pictures directories were the only entries in the samba config file, after adjusting the permissions, and adding the remainder of the directories to the samba config, I had no issues, or need to re-create the directories.

The 1-click install is a great feature, I'm a huge fan of Gallery, and was happy to see it offered.

The users configuration may also be confusing, simply because many users may not understand that they are not creating web application user accounts, but host accounts, I'd like to see an option for setting the new user's shell to nologin, if that would work with Amahi's backend?.?

Also, is there any plan for having an initial guest view, then allowing account users to login? The main reason for this is that with so many web applications, and if you wanted to share your G2 app with friends and families, the guests would have full access (minus console, VNC, etc) to the server and it's settings.

Here is my newbie q, is there a way to host multiple sites on an Amahi box?, for instance, what config file do I need to change to add a host header for another site?, or can I just add another IP address, and set the binding in the default Apache config at /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.config?

Thanks in advance!
-Josh

[cpg]

As for the rant/feedback, I see both sides. I am an MS Admin, but also support various Red Hat boxes (DNS, FTP, etc), and my servers at home are all Red Hat/Fedora, can't beat open source! With the target audience being mainstream users, I think there is some guesswork in getting the Amahi server up and running purely off of the documentation with the advertised features.

yes. we're working on it.

The file shares, I too had the problems mentioned above, the books and pictures directories were the only entries in the samba config file, after adjusting the permissions, and adding the remainder of the directories to the samba config, I had no issues, or need to re-create the directories.

The 1-click install is a great feature, I'm a huge fan of Gallery, and was happy to see it offered.

great!

The users configuration may also be confusing, simply because many users may not understand that they are not creating web application user accounts, but host accounts, I'd like to see an option for setting the new user's shell to nologin, if that would work with Amahi's backend?.?

very good point!

ideally once we have ldap as a back-end we will allow various settings per-user - login/ssh, shares, vpn, apps, ...

but yeah, it's a good point.

Also, is there any plan for having an initial guest view, then allowing account users to login? The main reason for this is that with so many web applications, and if you wanted to share your G2 app with friends and families, the guests would have full access (minus console, VNC, etc) to the server and it's settings.

yes

Here is my newbie q, is there a way to host multiple sites on an Amahi box?, for instance, what config file do I need to change to add a host header for another site?, or can I just add another IP address, and set the binding in the default Apache config at /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.config?

it is certainly possible. not supported out of the box at the moment. maybe one day.

i'd start another thread and perhaps someone can help you with the details on how to do this.
i have posted about this before recently (search ServerAlias). sorry ... no link handy now ...