All Aboard! Amahi Express CD Just Arrived!

Meet the Express CD v1.0 for Amahi 6.1

Installing faster than a bullet

This Express CD Train has taken a little longer on it’s route but we’re happy to announce that after lengthy development and testing the Amahi 6.1 Express CD is ready for widespread release!

Download!

Like all things, great products take time. The bittorrent and dowload mirror’s have been seeded and it’s ready to roll. So hit it hard, hit it often, and let your good times roll! Many kudos for Rod Waldren and Solomon for this smallest release ever and one of the most problem-free ever!

If you are new to Amahi, the Express CD is the shortest, fastest, easiest way to install Amahi. It erases your entire PC and makes it a headless Amahi 6.1 HDA (Home Digital Assistant) in a flash.

If you can spare the resources, please seed the torrents for an easier download in our server. Last time we brought the servers to their knees, however, this time we hope they will survive!

Live Apps Updates!

 

We’ve verified more apps and they made it to live status! Namely the world renowned and rock solid torrent downloader Transmission is ready to rock and roll just in time for you to use to download the Express CD! Then you can check out your system’s logs with one of Peter’s (pjcrux) personal favorites LogAnalyzer.

Lets not forget the importance of scheduling with iCalendar. While you’re waiting .. play some PHPYahtzee. If you’re train is going to be awhile still hit up the CMS app of Family-Connections. Got questions with pressing answer? No worries! Try the PHPMyFAQ app to solve your woes!

We are working on a program to verify apps faster and more reliably. This is critical in keeping the load of bug reports on the community manageable. Stay tuned … 🙂

Cheers!

The Amahi Team

24 comments

  1. dnfalk Jun 6

    Hey all. Great job on the express CD! It worked great on my little dev shuttle. However without much success on vmware esxi 4.1. If some one figures out how to get that working, I would be glad to test it.

  2. smick Jun 6

    I didn’t realize it was a headless server. So I guess you could install x over the top of it once finished?

    can’t wait to dig into this.

  3. PCPal68 Jun 6

    Hi,

    I’m fairly new to home servers and linux. I want to give Amahi a try.

    Sorry for the newb question:

    “It erases your entire PC and makes it a headless Amahi 6.1 HDA (Home Digital Assistant) in a flash.”

    Don’t you need to install Fedora before? Do you mean it will erase all other drives except the OS one?

    Thanks for the clarification.

    PCPal68

  4. repat Jun 6

    PCPal68, It does format your drive,installs Fedora and Amahi 6.1 in one fell swoop! It is best to leave any other drives unhooked while installing, to preserve your data. Being headless, means there is no Graphical User Interface (GUI) installed, so if you want/need a GUI, stick with the DVD install method. Your preferred Desktop Manager or GUI could also be installed after the Express CD, it’s your choice.

    Hope that helps,

    repat

  5. Mike Jun 6

    @ dnfalk I have installed 6.1 Express CD on vSphere 4.1: http://pricklytech.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/installing-amahi-6-1-express-on-vmware-vsphere-4-x/

    I have yet to tackle vmware tools or open-vm-tools yet though.

    Hope that this helps …

  6. Mike Jun 6

    Actually I have updated my blog post now and it includes instructions for also installing open-vm-tools 🙂

  7. Petr Jun 7

    Hi,

    Do I need a monitor for the headless install? i.e. Do I have to interact with the installation during install?

    Thanks
    Petr

  8. cpg Jun 7

    @Petr Good point. Yes. The install process requires keyboard/monitor. Not after that. The wiki has been updated to reflect that.

  9. Petr Jun 7

    It would be nice to add this feature to Express CD: The ability NOT to interact with the installation process. Obviously when you choose this option all options will be the default once i.e keyboard UK time pacific instead of keyboard UK time GMT and so on.

    I know, that Amahi is build on Fedora and Fedora installation by default wait for user input. Do you think it will be possible to tweak it – like live CD but it will copy itself to disk.

    Just a though it is probably not that easy.

  10. cpg Jun 7

    @Petr: It is actually somewhat doable, and we have experimented with it. Something called kickstart files. The thing is that updating these basic after the install is not that easy.

    What is the ultimate goal of doing that, though. Install happens only once in a long time. Being a small team, we have to look at what’s the best bang for the effort we can put in. A disk wizard, app verification for zero fails, easier hosting of apps, etc. etc. … there are lots of interesting things we need to work on next.

    Perhaps you can contribute to this method?

  11. dnfalk Jun 7

    @Mike… thanks! there were some network connectivity issues on the vlans i had set on the actual physical switch level that i didn’t know people changed… looks like things are working now 🙂

  12. Petr Jun 7

    Sorry I do not have the skills

  13. resins man Jun 9

    I’m willing to seed,
    but,
    the torrents have not been live for me for 36 hours,
    just sitting there doing nothing in/on my Synology.

  14. cpg Jun 9

    @resins Same thing happened to me with one client (Transmission). I tried on a separate computer with uTorrent and it started downloading and seeding right away! No idea why, never could find out!

  15. resins man Jun 9

    Downloaded the torrents again.
    Deleted the first pair from the DSM on the Synology,
    and,
    reloaded.

    Still no activity.

    Well, at least I tried.

  16. cpg Jun 9

    @resins Yup. Same here. It may be some version of bittorrent or something interacting openbittorrent.com trackers and some clients. It’s kind of a pain. One symptom I was having was that there was zero trackers on those torrents. It may be related or not.

  17. Steve Jun 11

    @Mike
    Thanks for your help. Downloaded, installed, set up, all in one wet afternoon and now running well on an ESXi host!
    Well done Amahi & thanks!

  18. Lucky Aug 29

    Following up @Petr’s point, I am also looking at no interaction installer – preferably in USB stick.

    I am using HP MediaSmart Server and it has no video out nor keyboard out. If I to upgrade my WHS v1 to Vail ($70), I can get the installer into a USB stick and run it without interaction.

    For Amahi, I need to install in different PC preferably Linux (which I do not have) and move with some tweak, or get debug board ($80) to install using keyboard and monitor (which I do not have – we only have laptops).

    With above facts, it is still cheaper for me to move to Vail as I do not need to get hardwares that I only use once.

    And HP MediaSmart Server is popular among people who needs Home Server – so that is your potential market. We are not hobbyist who are willing to spend hours hacking. I am one of many people who were not happy with the lack of Drive Extender in new WHS plus the end of HP support for the server.

    So there is your bang for bucks justifications…

  19. cpg Aug 30

    Think about it. Microsoft is a multinational company with a massive monopoly to leverage. Amahi .. a loose group of enthusiasts, putting their own time and money. It’s hard to argue with a $10 difference, but we’ll try and improve things. It’s hard to cover all possible configurations (especially if they cost good dollars to purchase for development). We’ll get there.

  20. Lucky Aug 30

    Hi cpg,

    My point is – if you can make the install process easy and seamless for HP MediaSmart users, I am willing to pay some $$ for the product, and I am sure others would, too. Maybe like $39.99 would be a good price point. You guys get some money instead of eBay resellers selling debug boards and we got to half the cost it would be to do it ourselves. And no need to search for spare monitor and keyboard…

  21. Emmanuel Sep 21

    I have downloaded the amahi 6.1 express cd and probably want to intalll it but dont know how to use it with my modem for free.I need help.

  22. Christof Dec 13

    Hello cpg,

    I totally agree with Lucky.

    As owner of a HP MediaSmart Server I am sticking with the old school Windows Home Server (which in fact is a stripped Windows Server 2003) since Windows Home Server v2/2011/Vail is removing Drive Extender.

    I came across Amahi Home Server, while searching for a solution to stream mkv’s towards xbox360/DLNA enabled devices. I was very intrigued about the media server component and saw you guys also use a disk pooling mechanism AND backup of Win/Mac which are all the things I need (even SABnzbd). Did some research and found a lot of positive feedback.

    However, since the HP MediaSmart Server have no RAID controller and no VGA connectivity, users of HP MSS must stick to a system to install unattended OR buy the overpriced debug board.

    I definitely would give money if there was a possibility to install the Amahi Home Server unattended over a file share/tftp/usb disk without any hassles. I have no skills to do so, otherwise I tried ;-).I think you will have a big market potential (definitely all HP MSS users) if you do.

    Kind regards

    Christof

  23. Basit Khan Mar 13

    I have download express cd, and try to install it but there is no offline installation from this cd, everything during installation is downloading from internet although this cd iso size is 699MB….

    Why everything is downloading from internet in during installation??

    any comments will be appriciated

    Basit@ambnet.net

    Thanks

  1. Amahi Express CD | NAS Buying Guide

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