AMAHI install for a newbie

[fido666]

Hi folks,

Have come to Amahi after trying out UnRAID, FreeNAS & the WHS "Vail" beta release. Just have a few questions to start with.

It seems I need to find a Fedora 12 Install DVD iso to set up Amahi, is that correct? I'm in the process of creating my profile, just not sure what to do next.

Also is Amahi still in beta or is it now at production release stage? I need something stable to house my growing media collection, currently scattered on various old HDDs. I have a lovely server sitting there waiting for the right OS, have 4 x 1.5TB HDDs to play with there plus a 500GB for the OS.

One thing I liked about FreeNAS was the ZFS & RAIDZ support, even I managed to get it working . Does Amahi have anything like this?

Cheers,
Fido666

[gboudreau]

Yes, you need the Fedora 12 DVD iso.
If you follow the installation instructions in your profile, you'll see step by step, very easy to follow instructions.

Amahi comes with something much easier than ZFS w RAIDZ, if you want to create a storage pool for shares: Greyhole.
Greyhole website, where you can read about it: http://greyhole.pommepause.com
Amahi wiki page about it: http://wiki.amahi.org/index.php/Greyhole

Note that Greyhole on supports pooling for shares. The storage pool will only be available (for writing) through Samba shares, not locally (unless you mount the shares locally, in which case you'll be able to read and write in there!)

Amahi itself is very stable; Greyhole (storage pooling for shares) support in Amahi is quite new. Some people use it, some don't. Bugs are still being found at this time, some of which resulted in some data loss. So if you're not confortable with that, you should stay away from Greyhole from the time being.
With that said, I'm personally using it to get 7TB of HDD space (6 hard drives), and I'm quite happy with it.

[fido666]

Many thanks for the reply. I've tracked down a copy of the Fedora 12 iso on one of my PC magazine discs, will burn it shortly.

Greyhole sounds interesting if a little scary (imagine if they had called it blackhole lol). I'll just get the basic build happening first to make sure the product suits my needs. What configuration are your HDDs (i.e. 6 x 1.5TB)?

ETA: The iso I downloaded off my magazine disc is only 670mb so it's a CD rather than a DVD. Does this matter?

[bigfoot65]

Yes, it should be the Fedora 12 Full install DVD. The one you have on CD is probably the Live CD edition. While some had had it work fine, others have not. Its up to you if you want to try. Recommend you see http://wiki.amahi.org/index.php/Self-install-livecd if you want to try it.

Please report back and let us know how it goes.

[fido666]

Sounds complicated but I'll give it a whirl Wish me luck

[gboudreau]

Greyhole sounds interesting if a little scary (imagine if they had called it blackhole lol). I'll just get the basic build happening first to make sure the product suits my needs. What configuration are your HDDs (i.e. 6 x 1.5TB)?

Code: Select all

[gb@hda ~]$ df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda1 20G 7.2G 12G 39% / /dev/sda6 1.8T 1.7T 149G 92% /mnt/hdd0 /dev/sdg1 688G 573G 109G 85% /mnt/hdd2 /dev/sdc1 917G 799G 109G 89% /mnt/hdd3 /dev/sdf1 688G 573G 109G 85% /mnt/hdd4 /dev/sdb1 917G 799G 109G 89% /mnt/hdd5 /dev/sde1 917G 763G 108G 88% /mnt/hdd6 /dev/sdd1 1.8T 1.6T 109G 94% /mnt/hdd7

(It's 7 drives apparently! )

[fido666]

I'm stuck, the CD is giving me the option to select:-

Live System User
Automatic Login
Other

The last option just asks for a username.

Which option should I choose? I notice the Live CD method is marked as no longer supported, perhaps I should just bite the bullet and download the DVD.

ETA: The only option I could get to work was Live System User but then I didn't have enough free space on the HDD to install. Will try again in the morning when I can find my Gparted CD to remove the old WHS partition. I'm downloading the DVD too so will probably just try that method rather then mess around with the Live CD.

[moredruid]

just bite the bullet

the F12 DVD install is basically what is recommended for the Amahi install, so you should be fine (and have the least issues) with that one.

[fido666]

Will do but will wait till the morning, it's almost 11pm here & I'm too tired now

[fido666]

I'm installing the Fedora 12 DVD right now but have a question about drive partitioning. Does the GUI installer automatically create a boot & a swap partition or do I have to manually edit the partitions? I can see a 200mb boot device and a 450gb (approx) device in addition to all the 1.5TB drives.

Also in Fedora is RAID via an Intel ICH9R controller supported or do I need to set up software raid from within the GUI installer? I have AHCI turned on in the BIOS from when I installed WHS since it doesn't support RAID anyway. Can I turn RAID back on and set up an array before installing Fedora & then Amahi?

Also I can see a RAID and an LVM button in the partition window. What are these for?

Sorry, I'm such a noob

ETA: I got Amahi installed but now I'm lost . I can see the server via http://hda in a web browser, I can also see the shares via Windows Explorer (took me a while to figure that out). The .home.com reference doesn't work for me, I confess I don't really understand that part of it though.

All of my drives seem to be one big storage pool, I only have a Partition 0 of 5.8 TBs showing in the dashboard, can't see individual drives. Should I have done something at setup time to split them up? Earlier I mentioned I hadn't turned on RAID in the BIOS or during setup. Has that pesky LVM monster gobbled them all up?