FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions
Here are a few of the most frequently asked questions we have received over time. Please contact us if you find that some need clarification, updating, or you find there is some question missing.
- Requirements 4 questions
- General 31 questions
- Configuration 8 questions
- Installation 16 questions
- Apps 8 questions
- Usage - general 3 questions
- Usage - networking 7 questions
- Usage - file sharing 7 questions
- Usage - VPN 1 questions
- Amahi Sync 3 questions
- Running your HDA 3 questions
Requirements
» Does Amahi support PowerPC architectures?
No, sorry. Not at this time. It may be technically feasible, however, we're a small team with limited resources.
» What architectures/systems does Amahi support?
Amahi supports the following architectures:
- PCs with a 32-bit x86 processor
- PCs with a 64-bit x86-64 processor
- Plug Computers based on the Marvell Plug Computer architecture. This edition of Amahi uses a different install method. See the Amahi Plug Edition
» What are the minimum requirements to run Amahi?
The requirements to run Amahi on PCs are:
- 512MB or more of RAM
- A 1GHz 32-bit or 64-bit processor
- 4GB disk
For the Amahi Plug Edition the requirements are:
- A Marvell Plug Computer
- 256 MB RAM (512 strongly recommended)
- 2GB storage
- 1.2GHz or faster
No flash storage is used by default on ARM.
» What is the best format for a hard drive to be used in Amahi?
For the Operating System, we recommend the default, ext4, which is a native Linux file system.
For mounting drives with your data, we also recommend ext4. However you can use many other file systems, like FAT and NTFS. These may come with some loss of functionality like permissions, file sizes or journaling.
General
» How is Amahi pronounced?
Amahi is pronounced ah-MAH-hee - rhymes with mahi-mahi (the fish)
:-)
» What is an HDA? What does it stand for?
Your HDA is your Amahi Linux Home Server.
HDA stands for "Home Digital Assistant." - Like a PDA, but for the home.
We came up with the term HDA to describe what the Amahi Linux Home Server aims for. Something as simple to use as a PDA, for the home and home networking.
» Where is the Amahi data stored?
Generally speaking, all HDA-related files are in
/var/hda on your system.
» Does Amahi support RAID?
Yes, you can use hardware RAID or software RAID with your Amahi server!
To be more precise, Amahi relies on the base Linux OS, on your hardware and the BIOS for RAID support. In other words, RAID is an OS, motherboard and BIOS feature.
You can find a guide for RAID on Amahi.
The Amahi team does hope to support RAID more actively in the future. If you are a RAID expert and have suggestions on how to configure it in a user-friendly way, get in touch with the team!
In short, many of our users use RAID, so, if you know how to configure and manage RAID in one of the many ways possible, you're good to go!
» Does Amahi support Ubuntu?
Now, this is a FAQ if there is one!
We started supporting Ubuntu!
If you are interested in helping, check out the wiki page on Ubuntu for the latest status of the Ubuntu port and stop by the IRC channel to discuss!
» Does Amahi support wireless networks?
Yes! Many, if not all of the Amahi users have wireless in their home networks.
Typically, you turn off the DHCP server in your access point or WiFi router. This may involve putting it in "bridged" mode, depending on the model of the device.
» Is the HDA supposed to be the DHCP/DNS server for my home network?
Turning off the DHCP in your router and using the Amahi HDA's one is the recommended setup.
A lot of the benefits of having an Amahi HDA are derived from the fact that it makes networking simpler through being the DHCP and DNS server in the network. Most of our hundreds of users do this and also rely on it to be running it 24x7, so it's quite well tested.
This makes the network a first-class network, with DHCP-requested names automatically becoming DNS names within your chosen home domain, networking booting (PXE), etc., etc.
With this, we aim to not have to type IP addresses again :-)
Here are the tradeoffs if you would like to only use some of the functionality.
» Do you support CentOS?
We do not currently support CentOS, however, there are a few people interested in Amahi for CentOS, due to the importance placed to reliability and security in CentOS. We have tested CentOS 5.1, however, it needs a lot of packages and infrastructure dependencies (related to Ruby on Rails) to make it work. We do hope that one day soon it can be supported. If you would like to contribute, please grab the git repo with the source code and get it touch!
» Do you support iTunes?
At the moment, Amahi has support for streaming to iTunes ® with an Amahi-packaged version of the Firefly media server, which also supports streaming the Roku Soundbridge. In addition, there is centralized file sharing. The application is called AmahiTunes.
» Do you have a UPnP or DLNA server? Xbox, Xbox360 or PS3?
YES! We have a DLNA server, one of our most popular applications. We also have uShare, but it's not favored over the DLNA server, which can stream more formats and to a much larger number of devices such as the Xbox, XBMC), the Xbox360 and the Playstation 3.
» How do I download Amahi?
Amahi is a new kind of "distribution." There is no download that takes place for Amahi itself. You download a Fedora install DVD, and install. As part of the install process, the Amahi repos are added and the chosen packages are downloaded. Simple.
More details on where our code is (the repos and in git) in
our Technology Section.
» What are the system requirements to install Amahi?
The system requirements start very low. Some users manage with a server running as slowly as 800MHz. Minimum disk space is about 3GB.
» What does Amahi mean?
Amahi does not mean anything today.
However, we did check out other uses ...
There is a remote village in Northern India called Amahi. Not much else is known about it.
Also, there was an ancient tale where an emperor's son was offered two women in marriage, a beautiful woman, named Amahi, and her sister.
He chose the beautiful one, Amahi.
The person offering then said he should have kept both!
The not-so-beautiful sister was to be a longer-living woman while the beautiful one was to be short lived.
As the ancient analogy goes, ... the beautiful sister was just like flowers on trees, beautiful, with a short life. The other sister, like branches on a tree, though not so beautiful, was practical and long-lived.
There is also a theory that Amahi could have meant sweet (甘い — "amai" phonetically) in ancient Japanese.
» Why do I have to sign up? What do I get for signing up?
Amahi is, at it's core, a managed server.
Our repository of software and our web site makes it easy to install and manage a server that would otherwise take many hours and days to setup.
Signing up allows you to get personalized management of your system.
» Does Amahi require to be running as a DHCP server?
No. You can optionally turn off your router's DHCP server for your LAN and let the Amahi HDA give out the DHCP leases for the systems in your network. Some people are understandably hesitant to do this, so we made it optional.
Thousands of people use the Amahi HDA as their DHCP and caching DNS server 24x7, so we have solid proof that it's reliable for continuous use. In fact many people prefer to use it because it's more reliable than their router.
You have several options:
- Use your HDA's DHCP and caching DNS server: This is the recommended configuration to have the all the features of the apps that come with Amahi.
- Use only your HDA's caching DNS server: To do this, change the DNS that your router gives out in the DHCP requests (or change your clients) to your HDA's IP address. By pointing your router DNS to the IP address of the Amahi HDA you will get a lot of
the functionality all of the machines in your
network that use it.
With this setup, everything will work, except:
- Assigning of static IPs in your network settings will not work
- PBA (Personal backup assistant) will work, except you will not be able to network boot your systems. Use the SystemRescueCD boot option.
- Automatic DHCP naming of machines in your network will not work (the Amahi DHCP is configured to automatically allocate DNS names for machines that request their name via DHCP).
- Your Amahi HDA-provided domain will not work inside your own network. This means short URLs will not work in this configuration. Please use the long form url (with the full domain name you chose for your network).
- No change in DHCP or DNS in your router: You can use the desktop in your HDA and do most every features on your Amahi HDA, as the HDA will use its own DNS server. Other machines in the network will not take advantage of most features in the the Amahi HDA. They will probably see the file server in the HDA, though it may only be accessible with an IP address, not a name. The AmahiiTunes server and UPnP server may be visible to clients, however, this is not tested/supported.
» Does Amahi provide NAS funcionality?
Yes. Amahi makes your hardware into a NAS and much more. Amahi has the typical services that a Network Attached Storage (NAS) has. WIth Amahi you have one of the most user friendly ways to configure users and shares in your network. That and much more, of course, like networking functions (no more typing an IP address) and tons of easy to install applications!
» How do I install Amahi?
Log on to your control panel in amahi.org and you will see a link to the customized install instructions at the bottom.
» Privacy: Does Amahi have any connections to the internals of my network?
Amahi does not have any "connection to the internals of your network." Amahi does not know what files you have in your system or any way to find out. The only way to "get inside" your network is via VPN, or ssh (assuming you open and forward the proper ports). That is access-controlled by the users you have created in your system.
Amahi is open source. You or anyone else can check the code in the system for any holes or any other bad behavior. There is an element of trust. We all place some trust in Fedora and RedHat when we run their software (and soon on Ubuntu/Canonical and Debian).
As well, we place trust further upstream in the open source community at large, which has built a very large portion of all Amahi and Fedora systems. The people in our contributor team are selected with care and we have a review process for the apps that come to Amahi, using a "pristine source" approach, with peer reviews from our testmasters, even being open source, to make sure there is no break in the chain of trust.
When you get closed source software you inherently trust the vendor of the software, even when they do not provide the source.
The goal of Amahi is "making home networking simple." Amahi is an unconventional "distro," with a different philosophy and a goal to make it easier to deply and use than regular distros. The core team would like nothing more than make Amahi self-sustaining and thrive. That cannot be done without trust from our users. If we attempted to break that trust would mean the end of Amahi.
The updates you get from Amahi and Fedora are open source as well and can be disabled if you want to. Our philosophy is that "it's your box, it's your network," and we just make it easy to control that.
Bugs and security issues happen. We do pay attention to those as a high priority (we did that when there were some DNS urgent issue a long while ago, where we reacted faster than even Fedora). This happens in any software.
In terms of sharing information in the server, we're very privacy conscious. You can see the privacy policy from the web site, taken from the fine folks at Wordpress, who we trust. However, note that we do not have any way to even know what's in your server. We have talked about the possibility of providing backups of some shares. If we do this, it will probably be done in an encrypted way, as we cannot really sustain any liability for any potential loss of your data.
» Is Amahi supported in my language?
Amahi is supported in about 20 languages and locales! The languages supported are: Bahasa Indonesia, български език, Dansk, Deutsch, Ελληνικά, English, Español, Français, Italiano, 한국어, Nederlands, Norsk (Bokmål), Norsk (Nynorsk), Polski, Português - Brasil, Português - Portugal, Русский язык, Svenska, 中文.
» Does Amahi work with the Smoothwall firewall
Smoothwall is not available as a one-click install today.
In the future, it may be packaged by someone in the community, however, our philosophy is "It's your box!" so you can definitely go into your Amahi HDA and install it.
The one suggestion is to use eth1 for the WAN device, and that will probably make installation in Amahi easier.
» Why do I need an Install Code to get my server installed?
In short: to make things simple and be able to provide services for you, such as dynamic DNS, VPN and more in the future.
The vast majority of users are used to an install code and prefer a simple install code than multiple configuration settings. As we provide more things, we can add configuration settings without changes to how things are installed.
Amahi is not a conventional Linux distribution. Amahi was started with the idea of making something that would ordinarily take days or weeks to setup a matter of minutes. Amahi is in essence a "managed server".
Amahi's goal is to make networking simple. The services and applications we provide and would like to provide in the future
» Does Amahi come fully loaded with the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySql, and PHP)?
Absolutely!
The majority of Amahi apps are LAMP apps. So, all the components to run LAMP apps are present in Amahi from the get go!
In addition, Amahi provides a most excellent development environment for LAMP as well as all the other major frameworks like RoR (Amahi itself if built in RoR), Python, etc. etc.
Wether you do it as a hobby, for learning or professionally, Amahi is a great development environment for the most up to date technologies.
» What is this error about? "There are no applications available at this time"
This error is an indication of two possible things: a) your HDA does not have network connectivity b) you installed an unsupported version of Amahi.
If you have network connectivity, it may be that you installed a version of Amahi that is too old or too new. Amahi usually stays a bit behind new major releases, due to stability considerations and also due to the development team being small.
» I used the wrong domain name for the install ... Any way to reinstall with the name I really want without doing a full reinstall?
There is no good way to do this, unfortunately, so it's not officially supported. The domain information gets populated all over the place in configuration files as your HDA gets used. The best solution is to reinstall.
However, if you just installed and have no apps installed or have not done much, you can probably get away with it by doing these steps, only for advanced users:
- Uninstall all apps and themes
- Create a new profile in your control panel with the same settings, but with the new domain. This will give you a new install code.
- In your HDA, bring up a terminal with root access (or ssh into your HDA if you do not have console).
- Remove a file with this:
rm /etc/sysconfig/amahi-hda - Run this command:
hda-new-install -f NEWINSTALLCODE(replacing the NEWINSTALLCODE with your new install code you obtained above)
Again, this is not really fully supported.
» I did not receive an activation email!
Amahi emails are sent with dual signatures. Most likely the email was sent out successfully. Here are some ideas and how to re-generate the activation email.
- Did you check your spam folder?
- Did you accidentally delete it?
- Does your provider reject emails with unique links?
If you would like to re-send the activation email, you can do so by entering your email in the forgot password page and your will receive an email with your activation link (or your reset password link if you somehow already activated).
Otherwise please contact support for help.
» How hard it is to convert from WHS to Amahi?
If you are using the same hardware, the best way is to simply copy the data out to an external drive or some other storage, then install Amahi fresh and copy the data to it, via USB or network.
If you are using different hardware, the best way to do this is by installing Amahi then copying the data over the network.
» Why do I need to register?
Amahi is not a traditional OS distribution. It's a connected OS expandable with a large collection of apps throughout the lifetime of the system.
Registration automatically sets up the proper API keys without concerning the user with technical gory details, pre-configures the system and makes it easy for people to customize and guide the experience step-by-step. Much like most OSs for smart phones and smart devices.
» Do you support Fedora 14?
Yes we do! Fedora 14 is the only supported distribution with Amahi 6!
» I cannot login!
There are two main username systems related to Amahi:
- The user (or email) in amahi.org and it's password. This is reset via email. This username is not case sensitive, though the password IS case sensitive
- The user in your server and its password. Fedora asks you to make one user during install and after that, that same username is used to fully create the first user in Amahi. These usernames and passwords are case sensitive.
These are two different systems. Your server is your server and cannot be reset by anyone but you, being logged in.
What you say can be interpreted as saying that one does not allow you to get into the other, which is right.
» How do I get Amahi Credit
Amahi credit can be purchased at the buy credit page. You need to be logged in to your account to apply the credit to it.
» Do you support Fedora 15?
No. Fedora 15 has major changes to the underlying distribution. That can mean instability, which is a major no-no in Amahi.
We may wait until Fedora 16 comes along, hence skipping Fedora 15 support.
Configuration
» Do I really need the HDA to be in a static IP address?
Yes, this is required. The reason is that being both the DHCP and DNS server, it's best to keep it always at a single static IP to prevent dependencies and race conditions between them.
» Can I use a domain that does not exist in the internet for my home network?
Yes! It's your network! :-)
Check this other question for more details on what to chose.
» What happens if I pick a domain that already exists in the internet?
We support this. If a site that exists in the internet is masked by the fact that you have that name in your network, we have the capability to add a hole, so that you access it. For instance, I have my network as example.com, however, I want to be able to access www.example.com. Please ask in the user mailing list how to do this, as it involves manual tweaking.
» Can I use a top-level domain?
Yes! You can have your very own top level domain! :-)
» What home domain should I pick in my HDA configuration?
We recommend a short domain. It's cute and it saves typing and electrons.
Do's and don'ts:
- Don't use a dynamic DNS domain. These are really for use externally, not in your home network! (besides, you get a free, zero-configuration dynamic DNS address externally with your Amahi HDA install)
- Don't use the same domain you get your email at*.
- Don't use a long domain. Shorter makes your networking simpler.
- Do feel free to use a vanity domain or one that does not exist on the Internet at large
home.com for your home DNS domain. That means your machines at home will be part of this DNS domain.
For instance, if you have an iPhone and a vaio computer, they will come up as
iphone.home.com and vaio.home.com.
Note that this choice has no bearing with things as seen from the outside of your home network.
From inside, you will "own" that domain in your network and will not be able to see anything from that domain outside of your network. So we recommend you choose a domain that you
- Don't care about seeing it from your network*, and/or
- Does not exist
» What static IP address should I chose for my HDA?
We recommend by default to be
10 but anything up to 99 should do.
We do not recommend using IPs 100 and above because that's the range that the HDA uses to give out dynamic DHCP leases. We may change this in the future to make it more flexible.
» What are my Network Gateway Settings?
In order to get up and running out of the box, you should supply the configuration of your network. If you are like most people, you have a router/modem in your network, and that provides the network settings for the rest of the network. The IP address for the gateway is typically one of:
- 192.168.1.1
- 192.168.0.1
- 192.168.1.1
- 192.168.0.254
- 10.10.10.10
ipconfig /all
In Mac OS X, go to System Preferences, Network, and look in the Router field.
In Linux, we don't have to tell you :-)
route
and look at the Gateway column for the default route.
» Can I change my home domain once my HDA is installed?
This is not currently supported. The reason is that the domain name is propagated across a number of settings in the system and at this time we do not have code to update all those.
Installation
» The installer recommends having a swap partition. What should I do?
If you know what you are doing, you can install a swap file, however, for most people, we recommend you install a swap partition. The installer is a little bit conservative. If you have a lot of memory, you can limit your amount of swap, unless you really plan to run memory-intensive tasks. It all comes down to how heavily you want to use the machine.
» Does Amahi support LVM?
Yes!
You can use LVM in your Amahi server. In fact some of our users like it!
Note that using two or three more drives will double or
triple your chances of having a file system catastrophe due to a hardware
failure. This is why LVM is often combined with RAID
LVM (Logical Volume Manager) is convenient for keeping multiple drives, very common nowadays, viewed as a single drive. However, unless you are familiar with LVM, we tend to nor recommend it due to the risk that one drive's failure makes it difficult to recover the data from the other.
We recommend this article on managing disk with LVM for a quick overview, if you want to learn more about it.
» hda-install: command not found - what gives?
You have to run hda-install in the full root environment: either "su -" or logging in as root directly.
Doing "su" only is not enough, as it does not provide the full root environment, in particular it does not have /usr/sbin in the path.
» Do I need to change how my HDA is plugged into the router?
No, it just needs to be in your home network and accessible by all other systems. In particular, you do not want to make it available outside (on the WAN) of your network completely. If you do want to access your HDA server from the outside, we recommend that you only open the ports that you need, through your router, and forward them to your HDA (e.g. VPN, game server, web server, ssh, etc.).
» Can I set up Amahi to boot headless?
Yes. Many people do this for multiple reasons. Amahi is designed to run headless. However, it's up to your system BIOS and OS settings to achieve this. First boot without a keyboard and make sure your system boots without problems. It may need a keyboard unless a “halt on errors” is disabled. There may also be a setting for whether the system boots or stays powered off when the power goes out. It's usually called something like “Restore n AC Power Loss.” We like it on or “same as before”, so that the server is always up. See our other recommendations on how to set up the server.
» Update for new HDA Apps (or no apps available)
To update the HDA apps installed you can reinstall them. Execute the following from a command prompt on the HDA, when you are logged in as root:
yum -y install 'hda-app*'
» Can Amahi be setup as a VMware appliance?
Yes -- Amahi has been setup to run on VMware, though we do not make a pre-built VMware appliance 'image' available at the moment.
Many people also use VirtualBox and Virtual PC to play with Amahi before running their server on real hardware.
» HDA specific URLs are not working
When the applications are installed on the HDA, or new applications updated, sometimes the Apache server needs to be restarted. This can be done from the command prompt on your HDA (as root):
service httpd restart
» I am using a proxy, however I cannot retrieve the repository RPMs
If you use
rpm or yum to install the Amahi Linux Home Server and you are behind a proxy, you may need to set the proxy specifically for those programs.
- For
rpm, you will need to use the options--httpproxy HOSTand maybe--httpport PORT - For
yum, you may have to doexport http_proxy=HOST:PORTin/etc/yum.confor from the command line before usingyumby hand. See this article to learn more aboutyumand proxy servers.
» Is it best to allow the system to update before setting up my HDA or should I setup first?
We DO NOT recommend you apply all updates before the Amahi install. The reason is that we test more heavily against the FULL DVD of the distro.
We should note that due to stability considerations, we turn off all non-Amahi automatic updates that the system has. We don't want unsuspecting users to be unpleasantly surprised by updates that happen behind the scenes. You can (and should periodically) update.
The Amahi updates are, on the other hand, automatic. We thoroughly test our updates and we make sure they are compatible with upstream packages from the base distribution.
» I see a problem with 'yum lock' being present when I try to install, help!
If you install and boot to the desktop before installing Amahi, there are utilities in the desktop to check for updates. This can interfere with the last stage of the Amahi install process. To interrupt that yum update, you can do:
killall -HUP yum-updatesd
If that does not work, the big hammer approach may:
killall -KILL yum-updatesd
» Do you support 64-bit systems?
Yes!
On new versions of the base distribution we usually support 32bits first and 64bits shortly thereafter.
» Do I need a client for the Amahi dynamic DNS?
No, there is no client needed or anything to install.
The installer takes care of configuring all aspects of your Amahi system. In the Amahi spirit to make this as simple as possible, there is no need to further configure any software client!
» Does Amahi support installing on the secondary network adapter? (eth1)
This is not recommended and it's not officially supported. Only eth0 is supported at the moment. However, we're starting to capture what it takes to run on a secondary controller such as eth1.
Some apps may bind themselves to eth0. If you find such an app, please report it to the team as a bug or in that wiki page.
» I can't sign on into my HDA!
During the installation of Fedora in Amahi 5, you are asked to create a user. Make sure you use this user to login for the first time to reset this user for Amahi.
Pay attention to capitalization. Usernames in Amahi are case sensitive, so Thomas and thomas are different.
» The applications do not work! It takes me to home.com!?
When the applications are installed, most of them also install a DNS name, which we usually call a "short name", like http://blog, also aliased to your full domain, like blog.home.com.
If you click on one app link and it does not work, most likely, your client is not using your HDA for DNS.
To do that, you can force your client to use your HDA for DNS, or, more easily, you can turn off your router's DHCP server and then restart your clients.
You can also release and renew the lease if your client if you know how do do that. In Windows, you type in a command window: ipconfig /release then ipconfig /renew.
Apps
» Do you charge for apps?
Yes. As Amahi became more and more popular, we asked the community and brainstormed how to get Amahi supported in a way that works for all.
Eventually we decided to put more effort behind Amahi and embark in an adventure to make Amahi more successful and reach farther. We decided to offer services that the community requested and charge for them, in addition to the free services we have offered for a long time (VPN, dynamic DNS, server alerts and more).
After a lot of discussion with the closer community we also decided to make a few apps available in the Amahi App Store for a small one-click install convenience fee.
The expectation is that at any time, about 2/3rds of the apps will not have this one-click install fee, and the others would have it. As for the fee, we asked and what emerged was that people felt happy to go for something like USD 99c to a few dollars.
This fee is not paying for the app, but for all the work that goes on to make it all available in something as simple as one click.
» Does the one-click fee for apps get shared with the app contributors?
Yes. At this time, the success of the app is shared back with contributors in the form of Amahi Credit. This includes both apps with a one-click fee and apps without a one-click fee.
A more successful app will result in more Amahi Credit towards the contributor.
» Does the one-click fee for apps get shared with the app authors?
Yes. App authors can add one-click convenience fees to the app that go directly to them. We have agreements with a few of the authors of the apps and we hope to attract more app authors to the Amahi App Store. If you are an app author (existing app or new app) and would like to claim your app in the App Store please get in touch via email with support (at this domain).
» If I pay the one-click fee for an app, do I have to pay for it app again?
We have not decided what to do with this situation yet. As usual we will arrange for something that works for everyone when the time comes.
Getting an app in perpetuity across Amahi releases and app releases is probably not a good solution. It does take time to package, test and maintain apps.
» What about reinstalls and updates to one-click fee apps?
Once you buy an app you can uninstall and re-install it any number of times.
You should not need to reinstall, however: any problems should be reported as a bug or via email with support.
Minor release updates for apps are free with the apps (one-click fee or not).
» Can I test a one-click install fee app?
Amahi does not have provisions for this at the moment. Amahi does try to provide all the information possible on the app, including the source, in it's app page.
» If I cannot use the app, can it be refunded?
Amahi does not have provisions for doing this automatically. Amahi does try to provide all the information possible on the app, including the source, in it's app page. However, please write to support explaining how the situation is not working for you. We will try to help you and we will decide if a refund is due.
» How quickly will Amahi release app security updates?
Based on previous experience releasing app updates can range from a few minutes or a few hours or a few days. Keeping apps relatively up to date is one of the advantages of using Amahi.
Depending on the load that the team has and how active the packager of the app is, it may take up to a few weeks.
In addition of the load of the team/packager, it all depends on how serious the issue is and how fast the team learns about the update. If it's serious, an update is usually released quickly.
Note that the above does not refer to Amahi platform security updates (which take priority over app updates).
Usage - general
» I've successfully completed the hda-install. How do I get started?
You simply type 'hda' in the URL bar of any machine in your network. This will take you to the HDA Dashboard. That is the short form of http://hda, from there, you will be able to use the wiki, calendars, your apps, etc.
You can access your wiki by typing 'wiki' in any URL bar in any machine of your network.
For backups, you simply boot your machines over the network and choose backup or restore.
» Why is mt-daapd fail to start when my HDA boots?
This is a known issue with md-daapd (the Firefly media server). It is known non-issue, to be more precise, because the Firefly media server gets restarted successfully later after boot.
The mt-daapd server requires avahi* (for service discovery), however, the upstream packager decided to make it startbefore avahi*, which makes it exit with an error.
The Amahi Linux Home Server incorporates a monitor that checks all servers periodically and restarts them if they crash. so mt-daapd gets restarted later, this time successfully because avahi* is running already.
* avahi, not to be confused with Amahi, is a network dicovery daemon.
» Can I host my own web site with Amahi?
Yes! This is an advanced feature that technical users love.
Generally, there are a lot of security issues one has to deal with if you want to host your own apps. Amahi cannot possibly help with that beyond warning about that.
At any rate, you can see how to host a web site in our wiki.
Usage - networking
» Can I have the HDA give static IPs for specific machines?
Yes. Go to Setup --> Networking --> Static IPs.
Generally speaking, your Amahi HDA has a modern DHCP and DNS server, with dynamic DNS. This means that any machine that requests a name (e.g. AppleTV) will be known in your network with that name, e.g. appletv.home.com (if home.com is your home domain).
» Didn't I use //hda from my Windows window to open the files in my HDA??
Question continues: now when I do that it opens a browser of the HDA web page, Wiki, etc.!
Yes, however, it's the other 'slash'. Network drives in Windows use the backslash form, not forward slash. I.e. \\hda. See the Storage and file sharing file page in our wiki.
» I want to add a printer to my HDA and make it a printer server, how do I do it?
You can use your HDA as a print server. Our wiki has a guide on making your Amahi HDA a print server.
Amahi uses the features in the base Linux distro for that. See some more generic help here.
The general procedure is:
Install the drivers for your windows and mac machines first. You may need to plug in the printer to your windows machines first to get the drivers to even load.
Plug the printer into your Amahi HDA, configure it with the desktop printing admin tool and make sure it works (if your system is headless, use VNC).
Under samba, export the printer (this should be the case in your HDA). Also, make sure CUPS is running.
Then, in your windows machines or macs, add a network printer. You should be able to browse one from your HDA, and print a test page.
» Can I disable the DHCP server in my Amahi HDA?
Note that a few of the benefits of your HDA will not work if you disable DHCP on your server.
The DHCP server in the HDA can be stopped by doing this:
Here are the tradeoffs if you would like to only use some of the functionality. In short, a few of the nicer features of your HDA will not be available. You can still point your machines to the DNS server in the HDA and get some of the benefits, like nice URLs for your HDA-provided services. This is not a supported configuration for things like Amahi Netboot.
- First go to the Setup --> Settings --> Servers
- Once there, find the DHCP and unselect both "Watchdog. DHCP Server is being monitored 24x7" and "Start at Boot time"
- Then Stop DHCP
Here are the tradeoffs if you would like to only use some of the functionality. In short, a few of the nicer features of your HDA will not be available. You can still point your machines to the DNS server in the HDA and get some of the benefits, like nice URLs for your HDA-provided services. This is not a supported configuration for things like Amahi Netboot.
» How do I setup port forwarding in my router?
With Amahi, only one service requires opening ports and forwarding them, and that is the VPN, one of Amahi's most popular features.
We recommend this guide which illustrates port forwarding for many popular routers.
» My computers disappear from "My network places" after 10-20 minutes!
In Windows XP, some computers vanish from the "My network places" after 12 minutes.
This is due to the "Windows firewall / Internet connection sharing" functionality.
Even turning the Windows firewall off does not allow you to see the rest of the systems in your network. The "Windows firewall/ Internet connection sharing" service will still be running. Here is how to disable it:
Open Control panel / Administrative tools / Services. Scroll down until you find "Windows firewall/ Internet connection sharing". Right click on it and select properties. In the dialog select "Startup type:" disabled. You might stop the service as well on this dialog, (presumably it is running). You don't need to reboot to make the change effective.
Read more about the "Microsoft Computer Browser" stack
» Does Amahi work under a VLAN environment?
As long as the VLAN is managed so that the network where Amahi is running looks like a local network, Amahi should work as in a local network.
Amahi does not manage VLANs itself.
Usage - file sharing
» How do I configure file sharing for windows/mac machines in my network?
By default, the machines in your network will see \\hda in Windows Explorer and the Finder in the Mac, however, they won't accept a username and password. At the moment we do not support configuring your samba users and shares from your HDA's setup dashboard. This is best done from the desktop, through either the console, if you have a monitor and keyboard, or through VNC. See the wiki section on storage and file sharing.
» The Samba configuration utility is not installed
Depending on which settings one chooses during install, the Samba desktop configuration tool may or may not be available. If you don't see it, and until this is automated, please use this command to install it:
yum install system-config-samba
This command should be run as root (directly or with sudo).
» Do i have to use a prefix on the username to log in to my HDA?
No, the user should be a plain user name, without a prefix.
Some versions of windows will attempt to put a prefix like XP-PC\user - just use user.
» Do the Amahi shares have quotas?
Not at this time. There is no way to limit the size a share can take.
» If I change where a share is, does the content get moved or stay where it is?
A share is a pointer. Shares provide access to data.
Adding, moving or deleting a share does not touch data at all.
» Is it possible to map a network drive for a hidden folder?
Yes. However, it depends how you have the folder is shared. If you share the folder before it in the hierarchy then you may see the files, otherwise you may need to enable hidden folders and files on the client os to see the things inside it.
» What transfer speeds should I expect?
Amahi uses Samba, which is a top notch file server. There is no general answer for this, because are many factors involved in a network transfer, for example:
- Type of network (10/100/1000 wired, wireless, etc.)
- speed of the drives involved
- client OS used
- cables used (cat4, cat5, cat6)
- switches or hubs used
- chipset used by the clients and the server
Usage - VPN
» When the VPN client asks for users what users are those?
The users you create are granted VPN access.
The same credentials are being used for file access, VPN access (and ssh access).
Amahi Sync
» What is Amahi Sync?
Amahi Sync™ is cloud storage for your HDA. It allows you to store, sync, and share certain shares on the cloud transparently.
Amahi Sync is an app and it's available to Amahi Premium subscribers.
Amahi Sync cloud storage is hosted in Amazon's AWS (Amazon Web Services).
Find out more at the Amahi Sync wiki page.
» Where is Amahi Sync storage hosted?
Amahi Sync cloud storage is hosted in Amazon's AWS (Amazon Web Services).
» How secure is Amahi Sync?
Your files are stored both on your shares and on Amahi's servers. All files are kept securely on Amazon Web Services. You can find more information about Amazon AWS.
The files are transmitted with state-of-the art encryption to Amahi's cloud servers. Only Amahi Team members that need to service these servers have (encrypted, key based) access to them. Note that there is no mechanism for Amahi Sync to receive files, only upload files from shares that have been deemed subject to Amahi Sync. This provides a more secure environment for your HDA.
Learn about Amazon S3’s security measures on the Amazon website.
Amahi Sync at the moment only supports files in the
Public share. By definition this lets you get public links to those files, even though the files are unlisted. The only way for someone to access these files are that a) you give them a link to it or b) someone guesses the link to the file.
Files from different users have different locations and are separated by DNS-based names, each in a virtual host belonging to each user. This helps in separating user areas, because one area is not reachable from another.
Running your HDA
» Login as "root"
- With direct access to the console, simply choose the username
root - If you are already logged in as another user enter
su -to change the current session to the root user - Use PuTTY or a similar utility to remotely login to the HDA
» Set up VNC
For a comprehensive explanation for setting up VNC on your HDA.
The basic steps are:
- Setup VNC server on the HDA
- Set the VNC user's access password
- Start the VNC service on the HDA
- Access the machine using VNC viewer
» How do I update my Amahi HDA?
You do not need to do anything to update your Amahi home server. Automatic updates are enabled by default for the Amahi-only parts of the system.
This is the update policy in Amahi:
- Amahi updates are automatic. Major security updates from the base distribution will also be made available for automatic updates, however, you should always apply security updates if the system prompts you for them
- Fedora updates are not enabled automatically. This is for stability reasons. We don't discourage users from updating. You can do Fedora updates by using the tools that come up on the screen, or you can update by hand via the command line, with
yum update.
This seems to work well and we received good feedback on it, users like it. However, we may change this in the future based on feedback.
We do try to make sure we keep reasonably up to date with the upstream distribution to make sure updates do not break anything in Amahi, however, that's something of a race, so if you update and notice something strange with Amahi, please report it (file a bug, or in the forums), indicating that you updated.