So if you’ve been following my posts recently, you’ve read about the Amahi home server that I installed after Thanksgiving. I’m incredibly please so far and I just wanted to share my experience beyond the actual product with the community itself. I’ve had a couple small issues, only one directly related to Amahi itself. There was a bug, which the developer is aware of and currently patching, which he was able to help me fix pretty quickly. The other issue was not with Amahi but with getting Ubuntu to automatically mount the shared volumes when logging on. We used pam_mount to accomplish this. The complete process was slightly involved and took a little bit of time. In Windows XP, I just mapped a network drive and gave it a drive letter and that’s all I needed to do. Each time I log on the computer, it was connected. It wasn’t that easy with Ubuntu. As you may know, I’m migrating my computers at home from Windows XP to Ubuntu. I am a supporter of Free and Open Source Software and I want to use it as much as possible. Thus, I have an Android based phone, Amahi home server running on Fedora 9 and a laptop running Ubuntu. Once I’m completely comfortable, my main desktop will have Ubuntu installed too. I can always install XP in Virtual Box so I have it if I need it. Ok, I’ve gotten off topic a little but I just wanted to share with you where I am so far.

So my experience with the Amahi community has been simply fantastic. I joined the IRC chat room from the information available on the support page and found help right away. The process to get Ubuntu to auto-mount at log-on took quite a lot of time. I had a couple guys working with me. They were completely patient with my lack of Linux knowledge.  They were very encouraging and I hope that while dealing with the Linux community as a whole, I find more individuals who are so willing to help. I’m not talking about a 10 minutes conversation here. The guys really put their heads into it. We tried a few options looking for the best solution. After a few hours, spread over 3 evenings, we got it working like a charm. I can’t tell you how helpful this was. What impressed me the most about it, even more than the amount of time they gave to my issue was that the issue was Ubuntu related. They could have easily said well, that’s an Ubuntu issue and we’re here to support Amahi. But they gave it significant attention. Just another thing that makes me feel good about my decision to use Amahi.

Just to add one more thing unrelated. I plan to write some reviews on android apps I’ve used on my G1. So if you’re interested, watch the RSS feed. I’ll try to do one per week or so. I haven’t seen much out there in the webernets (uh, I mean interwebs…), so maybe I can make myself useful by writing down some thoughts I’ve had.

Thanks for stopping by. Feel free to comment if you’d like.

Thanks to the long holiday weekend, I was able to install Fedora 9 (refered to as f9 from here out) and Amahi home server installed and running. So far so good. There were a few speed bumps, mostly in the installation of f9. Once that was done, I was up in no time.

I started with the f9 install dvd. I forgot that my machine had a cd rom so I had to take a dvd rom out of another machine and put it in that one. No problem. Then following the instructions from Amahi, I added the Amahi repository during the installation. The first problem arose when I moved forward to complete the install of f9. Suddenly it was asking me for Fedora disk 1. I was using the full install dvd, so there was no disk 1. Well, I thought, I better download disk 1. So I did and burnt it to a cd. After putting it in the drive, It still told me that I had the wrong disk and asked me to insert disk 1. Ok so now I know that this is an actual problem. With lots of searching I learned that f9 doesn’t like it when you add repositories during installation. I don’t know why but when I started over without adding the Amahi repository, it worked just fine.

Once the install was done, it rebooted and I had to log in as root because the Amahi instructions tell you not to create any users. You create them later in Amahi after it is installed. So before installing Amahi I wanted to update f9 but it just wasn’t working. It kept telling me there were updates and when I opened the updater it just wouldn’t do anything. I couldn’t figure out what the problem was. Finally I learned that the GUI updater will not update when you are logged in as root. I was able to update via the terminal using yum update. So now I was all patched up and ready to install. I had to use the instructions from the Amahi wiki to complete the install.

It was very straight forward. From there the last thing I had to do was turn off my DHCP in Astaro to allow Amahi to handle it. Then I also had to change my DNS settings. I had my DNS configured manually to use OpenDNS. So when I was trying to go to Amahi in my browser at http://hda , OpenDNS didn’t know what I was trying to do. When I changed my settings to get DNS automatically, it worked. Plus Amahi uses OpenDNS anyway so I wasn’t losing the security that provides.

The “shares” as they are called were simple to connect to my Windows machines. It worked just as it did when I connected to my FreeNAS drives. Connecting in Ubuntu wasn’t so easy. You can read how that was solved in the Amahi wiki. I joined the IRC chatroom and spoke to several people there. One of them (I think he’s the Amahi developer) helped me find the solution and asked me to document it there in the wiki. The people in the chatroom were incredibly helpful and kind. Even on a holiday weekend (at least here in the U.S.) there were one or two people there all the time ready to talk and help. It was a great experience and I’m excited about it’s many features. The active community seems to be planning more applications to supplement it as well.

Using Amahi not only gives me a great file server built on a solid foundation in f9 but it has several other cool features that my old FreeNAS server just didn’t have. We now have a household wiki where my wife and I can document information and things that need to be shared. AmahiTunes feeds your music to iTunes. WeightTracker is a cool little tool as well. I used it this morning. Being someone who tries to watch his weight, I can keep it updated and track fluctuations over time. It has a built in Bittorrent program too. I haven’t used Bittorrent in a long time but it will be great to have when I need to download the latest release of Ubuntu or Fedora. It has backup utilities so you can keep your files and systems backed up. It’s all accessed very easily from any browser on the network.

I’m still new to the Linux world and I’m always learning. I’ve definitely learned from this experience and I’ve enjoyed it. I hope that if you’ve read this you give it a try because it’s worth it.

I traded in my BB pearl for an Android-based G1. So far I’m super impressed! I’ve had my G1 for a week now. There are tons of reviews out there on the G1 and I’m not trying to compete with that. I just want to document my own thoughts so far.

First off, I love that it syncs with my Gmail, Google Calendar and Gmail contacts. My BB synced to my Google Calendar but it was not nearly as seamless. Gmail is much more usable on the G1 than it was on my BB. My contacts didn’t sync.

I love the Wifi feature. We don’t have 3G yet on T-Mobile where I live. So being able to link to my home wireless network is awesome. I can browse faster. I HATED using the internet on my BB. The browser was horrible and the EDGE network didn’t help things at all. Now I can pull up websites quickly. I can save bookmarks to the home screen which makes life easier.

Picture of G1

Some people have expressed a dislike for the adapter that is needed to use head phones. I like it personally. The adapter allows there to be only one port on the whole phone, rather than a data/charging port and a headphone jack. The adapter also allows you to use any headphones you want with the hands free feature since the mic is on the adapter itself. Check out the pictures, one with just the adapter and one with headphones plugged into the adapter.

G1 with headphones

I’ve enjoyed searching for apps in the Android Market. There are tons of useful applications available. I’ve tried many of them. They are easy to install and easy to uninstall. It seems that there are new ones added each day. I had trouble trying to install a bunch at a time, so I’ve tried to one download them one at a time now. To mention some of my personal favorites: Flashlight, G-Notepad, aSettings, TuneWiki, Any Cut, NightClock, twidroid, Password Safe, and Bubble. These are the ones that seem to work well close to 100% of the time. There are some others that I like as well but they can be buggy and not completely reliable.

If you like entertainment, there are plenty of games to keep your attention when waiting in line or at the doctor’s office. There are cool puzzles, PAC-MAN, and even the old school Snake we all used to play back in 1998 on our free Nokia phones.

There are a few things I dislike but not many. I don’t like the way my keyboard back-light makes it hard to see the keys at times. Although I’ve heard that’s not a problem on the black or the white models (I got the brown or “bronze”). I wish I could add more home screens. I’ve quickly filled up my 3 home screens. Also, as many people have noted, the battery life is horrible, especially if Wifi and GPS are enabled. I’ve also disable 3G networks since unless I head over to Tampa or Orlando there’s no use in having my phone search for something that isn’t there. The phone is thicker than my Pearl and the iPhone because it has the physical keyboard under the screen. I keep my phone in my pocket (no nerdy belt phone holders for me) which means a bit more bulk. Most of the time the phone is in my hand though, so no big deal.

I’m extremely pleased with my purchase. I know that Android and the applications will continue to progress and get better. HTC, the company that makes the actual hardware, is a company with a good reputation for making quality phones. I’m really looking forward to watching the Android platform move forward and I’m glad I will be able to experience it first hand. And to the Goog… good job guys!

This weekend I successfully installed Ubuntu on my laptop. I have a Dell Vostro 1500. It’s currently set up to dual boot with Windows XP. I’m leaving XP on, since I may need it at times when working on Windows-based machines for clients. I’m not against Windows honestly, I just support Free and Open Software and I’d like to use those platforms more. I desire to become more proficient in Linux and one good way to do that, just switch. I learned Windows somewhere along the way, I can learn Linux too. My wife will be the main factor though. If she can use Linux and be happy (which I believe she can) I’ll be good to go. She mainly need to get on the internet and access files from our file server.

Installing Ubuntu was very easy. It asked me how big I wanted my partitions and resized them for me. Everything was pretty straight forward. Once I booted to Ubuntu I had a little trouble getting my wireless to work. But I was able to figure it out. After searching and searching online with no answers, I looked through the “add programs” and found “Windows wireless drivers”. I install this program and downloaded the windows driver. The driver was in an .exe format and so I had to use 7Zip to extract the needed file. Once I’d added that file, the wireless powered right up. I disconnected the ethernet cable and was wirelessly connected. Pretty easy once I realized what I needed to do.

I did have to install the nVidia driver and things seem to work fine. I only have the option for 1240×800 resolution, which is what I used in Windows XP so I’m not worried about it but I don’t have any other options if I didn’t like that one.

The only other issue I had was connecting to my FreeNAS server. I set up an FTP connection and it seems to be working ok. I want to figure out, if possible how to mount the FreeNAS drives as local drives like I do in WindowsXP now. That will be paramount for my wife’s use, since she relies heavily on accessing our photos from there. But I’m also planning on setting up Amahi so maybe that will work better since it’s also Linux-based.

Amahi runs on Fedora 9. I have 2 options for this one. Run it headless (no monitor) as a separate server just as I am running FreeNAS now. Or install Fedora on my desktop which currently runs Windows XP and use that as the Amahi server and as a workspace. Reading on the Amahi website, they seem to say that many people run Amahi on a computer that they use as a workspace as well. My desktop has 3gb of RAM, so it should have plenty of power to do that. Making that choice though means removing XP because I won’t really have the dual-boot option since the Amahi server would then be unavailable when running Windows. i honestly don’t know how soon I will be able to even do this.

This is my final entry regarding the deployment of my Astaro Security Gateway. I just wanted to comment on how easily I was able to set up the VPN. It was equally easy if not easier than the OpenVPN client from Untangle. It’s a simple download from your server and run the installer. What I like about it the most is that it’s password protected. So if someone else got ahold of it or was on my computer and tried to enable the VPN connection, they’d have to know my password. I like that.

I have two projects coming next that I will try to write about. The first one is to install Ubuntu, which is a version of Linux, on my laptop to dual-boot with Windows. Right now both my laptop and desktop run Windows XP. I want to migrate to Linux but I need to be sure my wife will be comfortable first. So by dual-booting, she’ll be able to go back to windows very quickly if she hates it.  I think it will work fine for her. She mainly just gets online and she is already used to using Firefox. She actually hates it when she has to use IE.

My second project will be more work. I want to migrate my file server from FreeNAS to Amahi. Amahi is a Linux based home server that runs on Fedora, which is another version of Linux. I just finished burning my Fedora 9 DVD. That one should be a lot of fun. I’ve a little planning to do first and it may take me a few weeks before I have time to dive into it.

So that’s it for now.