Many problems still...

[JasonWard]

Perhaps its because I went the ExpressCD install route but I still have a number of problem with my Amahi server.

The phpMan install is... broken, firstly it's missing lots of content, secondly it's title link (on every page) instead of taking me back the start of my own phpMan, takes me to the phpMan at Sourceforge.

apps-proxy has vanished, it was working yesterday, but this morning its gone, and navigating to its URL takes me to the phpMan site.

MediaWiki just says "MediaWiki internal error. Exception caught inside exception handler"

LogAnalyzer works great has once given me a spurious error saying that the syslog didn't exist, but it didnt seem to stop it working.

phpsysinfo - works, but is missing half of the information, if you look here at the demo version you can see it has "process status", "quota stats", "SMART informatics", "RAID status", "Battery Status", "IPMI Status". and "PROCESS STATUS" which is different from the other "process status". How do I get these (well some of them, SMART and Battery Status are really important to me, and I'd like to see "process status" as well).

phpMyAdmin - dam, I've forgotten the password, but when I used it first time it seemed to be fine.

Squeezebox server - doesnt do anything for me, it hangs with errors when it tries to talk to squeezebox the website, the BBC iplayer addon fails with parse errors, the listen with 3rd party MP3 players is a broken config since my MP3 player on on a different host to the server, but the server gives out the address http://localhost:9000/stream.mp3

MindTerm is cool, although I need to find out what "File operations disabled, server identity can't be verified" means and how I can fix it.

Webmin is cool too, but I have run into another problem most wouldnt I suspect, whatever URL you use to access Amahi, when selecting Webmin is uses the short url of "webmin:10000" and I need it to use the long url of "webmin.home.com:10000" (more of why below).

Other things, is there a way to stop Amahi filling my syslog with:

Today 11:15:37 localhost nmbd 1614 Syslog Cannot find my workgroup WORKGROUP on subnet UNICAST_SUBNET.
Today 11:15:37 localhost nmbd 1614 Syslog collect_all_workgroup_names_from_wins_server:
Today 11:15:37 localhost nmbd 1614 Syslog [2010/11/05 11:15:37, 0] nmbd/nmbd_browsesync.c:585(collect_all_workgroup_name ...

I got pages and pages and pages of it (basically 3 new entries every 10 seconds)

Attached is the Amahi Application installation log

Now, I have also installed (via webmin) the squid proxy server, thats working great, but I have a bit of a problem witch perplexes me.

When I ask a client to use the squid proxy any short forum URL's (such as http://hda/ etc) fail, openDNS gets to see the DNS request and tries to resolve it for me by searching for it.

The squid proxy is using the HDA as its DNS, and PING or NSLOOKUP a short name works fine - any ideas whats going off with Squid then?

Which brings me neatly back to the one issue I have with webmin, it defaulting always to use the short form name, anyone know how this can be fixed?

[JasonWard]

Ah! Oh yes, the other problem with webmin! It doesn't work with "Amahi Web-Apps Proxy" for the same reason as above, clicking on its link in the "webapps proxy" just takes you to "http://webmin:10000/" which if your coming from over a WAN link is not good.

And I got my "Amahi Web-Apps Proxy" back by uninstalling phpMan

[bigfoot65]

That may be true. You definitely have something wrong going on with your system. All apps play together and having one installed should not affect the other.

Have you done any modification to your system? Also, for the web-apps proxy you might need to modify the app conf file for webmin. It is located in /etc/httpd/conf.d directory and has a number preceding webmin as part of the file name. You may need to change the redirect line to include your domain. For example, make it wemin.home.com if that is your domain. Keep everything else as is.

This may not work as it runs on a different port, so you may have to forward that port in your router and modify the conf file as described in http://wiki.amahi.org/index.php/Hosting_a_website.

[JasonWard]

my "Amahi Web-Apps Proxy" has vanished again, this time replaced with "Webmin" all I did between it working and not working was edit /etc/httpd/conf.d/1000-webmin.conf

Changing the line

RedirectPermanent / http://webmin:10000/

to

RedirectPermanent / http://webmin.home.com:10000/

and then:

service httpd reload

So I went back and reverted the changes and again ran

service httpd reload

but navigatigating to http://apps-proxy.home.com/ still takes me to webmin

What is going off?!

[bigfoot65]

Might be the browser cache needs cleared. I have had similar issues in the past. I have also had to restart my hda as well.

[JasonWard]

Not the browser cache... I know get an error as per not being able to use http://webmin:10000/ whereas with the redirect change I could use http://webmin.home.com:10000/

I'm wondering if I should give up, install Ubuntu server and install and configure the apps manually, lot more work for me, but I'm more comfortable with Ubuntu than I am Fedora and it looks like making my HDA work is going to be just as much work anyway...

Having said that, the DNS setup that comes with the HDA has always been something I've found very complicated to setup myself... I feel dammed if I do, dammed if I don't.

[bigfoot65]

Sorry you are having a hard time. Keep in mind the Amahi home server is not specifically designed to be used outside the network. While the capability exists, it is often a bit more complicated to set up.

The apps that use different ports often cause these issues. One possible solution would be to use OpenVPN ALS to access apps. I have successfully done this in the past and was able to use webmin. It is not hard to setup and basically VPNs you into your network so you can access all apps without the web-apps proxy.

Just a thought, but might be a quick solution and meet your needs.

[JasonWard]

It's not external access thats the problem, I can work around that any number of ways... but the none working apps of which I have more than I have working are it seems going to take a time and learning to fix, and if I'm going to do that I'm thinking I'm better off doing that on an Ubuntu base, firstly as I am more familiar with Ubuntu and secondly because if I am faced with a steep learning curve I would rather invest that into Ubuntu.

I'm going to keep running Amahi for now, but I'm going look at running some alternative solutions Zentyal (aka eBox) seems the best option so far, although being firmly aimed at business rather than the home user its a major miss in someways.

[bigfoot65]

Maybe I don't understand your problem. All apps should work fine after install. For access outside the local network that might be different. What apps are not working for you?

The web-apps proxy obviously can complicate things. Internal access has been our primary focus on the project. While we do provide some support for outside access, there are so many variables that we cannot predict/resolve.

We pride ourselves in trying to meet user needs. It is important that we understand what the issues are so we can try to help correct them if its in the scope of the project.

I would venture to say that you might have better success if you installed the full Fedora 12 DVD versus the Express CD. It is still undergoing testing and might not mirror the environment you get from the full install. If headless is your desire, you can always remove the desktop. Although it does not take up that much space. Changing run level will help too I am sure.

Just trying to offer some options. Its your choice obviously which you prefer to use.

[JasonWard]

Well my OP details which applications are not working, and the reason I used the ExpressCD was because you suggested it as an alternative after Fedora failed to install on EeeBox PC's because (I found after some digging) that Fedora and the Intel video driver fail to detect VGA monitors connected by a converter to a DVI interface, and that I would need to do a weird install to get around this and manually tell it what video drivers to use.