Gwen Demulder

As you might recall in my previous post I talked about the Amahi home server. I feel obligated to explain a little bit more about this amazing piece of software and how easy it is to set it up.

The first thing you need to do is register on their website. You will need to provide some information about your server installation. Like which ip you are going to give this machine, it is very important that you stick with this configuration or it will break the installation. After you’ve provided the necessary information you will receive an installation ID which will set up and configure the amahi system on your machine.

After you’ve received the id you can start setting up the fedora 12 OS on your server, during the install you will get the option to add a repository. In this stage you have to add the amahi repository. It will add an install Amahi link to the desktop of your new fedora install. Upon clicking on the install icon you will need to enter the id you have received. Once the install has completed your Amahi server is up and running.

The people at Amahi recommend to use this new server as your dhcp and dns server (it uses opendns).

I however like to turn of my machines when I don’t use them. So I decided to leave the dhcp task to my router and disabled it on the Amahi server.

In order to fully utilize and make sure that you can do everything the amahi server has to offer you need to change your dns server (in your router, or network setting) to the ip of your amahi server.

Once that is done you can simply surf to http://hda and start configuring your shares, add users and install applications. I use the server mostly for file sharing and as a bit torrent client.

The applications that I have installed on the server are:

• phpsysinfo
• amahitunes
• transmission

You can use this server headless, to shutdown you can easily navigate to the settings page and click the shutdown button.

The only thing that seems to be missing is a backup option for your server. After al if you are going to put all of your data on this system you want to be sure that it is secure. Hopefully this feature will be added afterwards. But for now I’ll just connect a usb drive the the machine and backup myself on a frequent basis. Though I fully believe to perfect Amahi this option should be added it in the future. However for clients there is software available to backup to the Amahi server, still it remains strange that they did not provide a backup solution for the Amahi server itself. A nicer design of the web management page is also welcome.

Overall I am quite content of this opensource product. I honestly believe that it thoroughly kicks the ass of the Windows Home Server. It is also a plus that virtually every common Operating System is supported.

To build the server itself I used the Intel D510MO mainboard, a stick of 2GB memory and a 640GB Harddrive. As a case I used an old unused one which still had its power supply. I considered adding a second stick of 2GB memory, but seeing the load in phpsysinfo I can tell that it isn’t needed.

I’ve added some screenshots of Amahi to the gallery:

Hey hey hey,

Good news, next to the MCP certification I’ve managed to get my first Apple Certification. It was a requirement for our company if we wanted to sell Apple material in our store that we had several Apple Product Professional. So together with some colleagues I took the online tests until we reached the required score. Turns out we will get sent a certificate plus an Apple Pin. I like things that show of my achievements, even though it may just be a piece of paper. I hope to receive the package pretty soon.

It’s been ages since I’ve done some 3D work. I’m done taking tests for now. I’ve already started thinking about my next project to undertake or finish

Well,

the teeth have been removed. Their roots were larger than I expected them to be. Besides the holes which were left in my mouth everything seems to be in order. It was the first time that I was put under a full sedation. It was a very strange feeling.

If there is one thing that I have learned from this it is that I like solid food!

I also had to take the microsoft 70-653 exam today. I passed it without much trouble, it was my first microsoft exam and I was quite excited about it. I really believe in Windows Small Business Server 2008. It’s a product that offers small business’s the best that Redmond has to offer.

I hope I will get the MCP mail soon from Microsoft but I’ve heard that it might take a few days before I recieve it. I’ve always hated waiting.

Well the past few weeks my macbook has been terrorizing me with fan noise. The fan was working at 6000 rpm instead of the usual 1500-2000 rpm. This also meant that the battery of my machine was quickly depleted which isn’t a nice thing.

It turns out that the printer that was installed, a canon ip3000, somehow made the fans spin like a mad man. After removing the printer from the driver list the fan speed lowered and the remaining battery life time shot up.

So I guess there might be some issues with the canon printer drivers. If you have fans on your mac that spin out of contol you might want to check your installed printers!

Whilst installing a PC-Game I took a peek in 3D Studio Max at one of my models. I had nothing better to do because I was installing a game. It is ridiculous how long it takes to install a recent pc-game. Gigabyte after gigabyte after gigabyte after… Wel you get the point. Anyhow, one thing led to another so I ended up with a small render which you can view on the left.

Some of you might remember the blog entry about the atom mainboard which I made a few weeks ago. Well recently the dual core atom boards were unleashed on the web. Some colleagues of mine managed to get their hands on one of the dual core intel boards and decided to test if it could manage to play High Definition (1080P) video content. During the first try the movie had a few hick ups here and there. After examining the task manager we noticed that only one core was in use. It turned out that vlc was using only one core to decode the movie. When BS Player was used the movie was played back smoothly. 

So there you have it, the cpu is in theory capable of handling High Definition video. However adding a more recent chipset with a better equipped onboard graphics would be a great improvement. Throw in a HDMI connection and you have a killer Media Center mainboard.

Business is booming for Intel thanks to the little cpu they’ve thrown on the market. It’s cheap to make, has a very nice margin (I suspect) and the computer manufacturers are lining up to use the cpu in their products. Intel is even working on a variant of the cpu for usage in cars.

Yes the Intel atom has a bright future ahead for itself.

D945GCLF Board

Well early august I ordered an D945GCLF board from Intel. This mainboard isn’t a super performer but it is the first intel mainboard to use a super low voltage CPU called the atom. The only downside of this board is that it uses an older chipset that draws a lot more power… It kind of ruins the fact that the cpu is designed to use as little as possible. The intel gma950 graphics isn’t that spectacular either. It rules out High definition picture.

Nevertheless this is a nice board to have around to mess with. At a price tag of € 60 this is a bargain. The 2GB of memory only cost me an extra € 20. I used spare parts to put together the system. It’s currently running windows XP MCE, but I might try many different OS’ s on it. 

The CPU also supports 64bit so that’s a very nice extra.