- 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
Code: Select all
VobGuAccegajracgiginWimdaicWokFusDootwasLiaquigEed
- 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.