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Brand new user thoughts

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andrew
Posts: 3
Joined: 10 Jan 2011, 22:53

Brand new user thoughts

Post by andrew »

I finally have my B3 up and running. Here are my thoughts on the experience with suggestions for improvement. My disclaimer is that I'm a long time netbsd user, it wasn't until I took over my kid's mac that most of the B3 suddenly worked and I understood it.

- Doing arp -an to find the b3 was easy. Great, connect to https://x.x.x.x failed. Hmm. Connect to http://x.x.x.x worked.
Suggestion: even with a self-signed cert, using https should be available, if not the default.

- the web interface won't let me pick a secure password. I want something like the output from 'apg -a1 -m50', like this:

Code: Select all

mCYklP<UYfXNO2T`%|/5BIE6&r:e<pXqAEc\Rtv1[7(s+!_jV
NOT like this:

Code: Select all

VobGuAccegajracgiginWimdaicWokFusDootwasLiaquigEed
Suggestion: allow complex passwords.

- Login, update the system, switch the b3 to server mode, restart. Easy.

- My netbsd laptop does not have afp nor samba installed. ssh to the b3 and notice a few directories in my homedir: downloads, private, torrents. Where are music? photos? shared files? Hmm. Poke around the apache config, find /home/storage. wtf. ok.
Suggestion: every user has a homedir, put all of their files in their homedir, rather than in some shared /home/storage directory. Configure apache to load mod_userdir.

- Map sshfs to /home/storage, copy away. on second thought, there is a web interface, why can't I do everything from the web interface? I can, it's just very clunky because of the above filesystem layout.

- copy some music over to the right /home/storage/music/ directory. the player can't play anything but stock mp3s. it won't play flac, nor non-DRM m4a files, nor ogg files either. ugh. Do I really want to convert 96GB of music to yet another format?

- I started messing with the configs, broke ssh, rebooted, can't login. Ugh. Boot from rescue, fix.
Suggestion: it would be fantastic to have usb serial or some sort of console capability (ipmi) for idiots who lock themselves out. Even better is not having to go into shell at all.

- Think harder about this and start over. Reload the B3 from the rescue image, start the entire setup from scratch. Borrow the kid's mac. oh look, http://b3.local works now. look, I can afp mount the b3 with the configured user, and there are all of these folders under Public Share and User Share. hmm. Why not include NFS? Have the kid hack at it. Kid gets it pretty easy, finds the music player has problems with ogg/flac files too, gives up. loads up some images, ok, creating albums is a pain. can't i import from iphoto or digikam? kid plays with file manager and gives up due to too many clicks required to do anything. "Be more like dropbox".

After a few hours of trying to do it the excito way, punt. Get crazy with the cheeze wiz and treat it like a debian server. Remove everything back down to a minimal install. install ssh, make sure it works, restart. ta-da. now I have a Debian arm server. Too bad i wanted a simple, easy to use media center for the family that we could make public and scrap facebook and google's picasa.

future tasks to try:
- setup xbmc and/or geexbox
- convert fav music to mp3, try music player again
- try torrents
- think more about how to improve the stock b3 software
- i'd like this to be my router/gateway/firewall. My network is ipv6 internally, even though it's ipv4 from ISP. b3 doesn't do ipv6 dhcp nor ipv6 autoconfig. ISP will soon be ipv6 and ipv4 assignments.
jmyreen
Posts: 5
Joined: 11 Jan 2011, 02:14

Re: Brand new user thoughts

Post by jmyreen »

b3 doesn't do ipv6 dhcp nor ipv6 autoconfig.
Funny, IPv6 worked "out of the box" on my B3. I'm using stateless autoconfguration, not DHCPv6.

Johan Myréen
Ubi
Posts: 1549
Joined: 17 Jul 2007, 09:01

Re: Brand new user thoughts

Post by Ubi »

and there's a howto thread and wiki entry on it for those who can't get it to work out of the box :)
andrew
Posts: 3
Joined: 10 Jan 2011, 22:53

Re: Brand new user thoughts

Post by andrew »

Ubi wrote:and there's a howto thread and wiki entry on it for those who can't get it to work out of the box :)
I can't find a wiki page. I did find a howto thread on how to make the B3 an ipv6 client, but not be the ipv6 autoconfig master.

I want the b3 to replace my router, which currently gives out ipv6 addresses to clients on the lan.

The Network gui only offers dhcp assignments for ipv4.
jmyreen
Posts: 5
Joined: 11 Jan 2011, 02:14

Re: Brand new user thoughts

Post by jmyreen »

andrew wrote:
I can't find a wiki page. I did find a howto thread on how to make the B3 an ipv6 client, but not be the ipv6 autoconfig master.

I want the b3 to replace my router, which currently gives out ipv6 addresses to clients on the lan.
Ok, sorry, I misunderstood you. Install the radvd package (sudo apt-get install radvd). You need to configure it too, of course. Radvd acts as a Router Advertisement Daemon for "stateless" autoconfiguration. If you want DHCPv6 you need to do something else.

Johan
DanielM
Posts: 637
Joined: 28 Mar 2008, 06:37
Location: Sweden

Re: Brand new user thoughts

Post by DanielM »

alreadyfoll wrote:I can't find a wiki page.
You mean you can't find http://wiki.excito.org?

/Daniel
Ubi
Posts: 1549
Joined: 17 Jul 2007, 09:01

Re: Brand new user thoughts

Post by Ubi »

don't bother, it's another link troll. They do get creative though
romeoz
Posts: 2
Joined: 14 Mar 2011, 13:12

Re: Brand new user thoughts

Post by romeoz »

Hi Johan,
jmyreen wrote:
andrew wrote: I want the b3 to replace my router, which currently gives out ipv6 addresses to clients on the lan.
Ok, sorry, I misunderstood you. Install the radvd package (sudo apt-get install radvd). You need to configure it too, of course. Radvd acts as a Router Advertisement Daemon for "stateless" autoconfiguration. If you want DHCPv6 you need to do something else.
Can you point me to the repository you are using to get radvd? Neither of the 'official' B2 repo's (main repo, as well as the unsupported and main debian ones) seem to have it. Checked the main elvin repo for B3/powerpc too and did not find it there either.

EDIT: found radvd in the debian archive repo. Had not realized etch really is that old already. :-/
Thanks to eek with this post http://forum.excito.net/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=2837#p13724 to point me into the right direction.


Oh, and btw, regarding Ubi's response to the other question about this mysterious wiki entry:
Ubi wrote:don't bother, it's another link troll. They do get creative though
None of the sections of the wiki show any obvious titles related to (ipv6) networking. And there are no topics to be found by searching the wiki for 'radvd' or 'ipv6', so a pointer would still be appreciated.

Cheers,
Romeo
Last edited by romeoz on 21 Mar 2011, 04:21, edited 1 time in total.
Ubi
Posts: 1549
Joined: 17 Jul 2007, 09:01

Re: Brand new user thoughts

Post by Ubi »

my reply was to a post that has been subsequently deleted, not to the original request for the wiki (see in my first comment the user name whom I refer to).
Binkem
Posts: 388
Joined: 10 Jul 2008, 02:26

Re: Brand new user thoughts

Post by Binkem »

Sorry about that. I try to keep the forum clean by deleting all spam mail, but this sometimes creates weird discussions as there may be replies to the spam. It may be best if you just report all spam and then ignore it. I will usually removed spam within 24 hrs. (I cannot guarantee this. I'm just another B2 user).

Martijn
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