Halloween scary: Amahi 6.2 is here, and Amahi 7 on the way! October 5
Well in time for Halloween, we are happy to announce the release of Amahi 6.2!
This release brings mostly stability and bug fixes. We have included a handy introduction to Amahi shares (PDF), fixed issues with special usernames, fixed shares area permissions, and in some cases we fixed disappearing DHCP leases. See all the details in the release notes for Amahi 6.2. This is an automatic update* and it will be the last release before Amahi 7.
The Amahi on Ubuntu release has been very popular! We have beefed up Amahi’s underlying infrastructure in the last few months to support the growing load. Amahi Sync, our own cloud syncing and backup solution for premium users, has been enhanced to support the increasing load. Amahi has been growing faster than ever and we try to keep up!
There have been many apps that have been ported or needed reimplementation and the community of app contributors has delivered steadily, to the point that we have almost all apps running across all platforms. Kudos to bigfoot65, the Amahi AppMaster for managing it with diligence and persistence. Thank you!
There is also some new blood and activity in apps, like the popular ownCloud, OpenRemote, MediaRip, Status.net, ThinkUp, Multicraft (a new and nice Minecraft server) in close cooperation of several people in the community (bigfoot65, northridgegrp, sanfelix, Taapie, zombu2, others, …). We are overdue for a post on the latest apps …
On other news, development is well under way on Amahi 7, based on Fedora 17 (or 18). Amahi 7 is a major re-implementation of the whole Amahi platform, with modern technologies like Rails 3 and ruby 1.9. It should run faster and be able to do much nicer things. We cleaned up and put a whole new nice skin to the wiki! Amahi got a nice plug on the popular blog @makeuseof reviewing WHS alternatives. Recently, community member Al Jachimiak (aka M3n_tal), along with support from core team member Pat (aka repat), presented a session on Amahi to a capacity crowd at the Ohio Linux Fest and it was well received!
Are you interested in getting involved with the Amahi community? We have lots of projects that are busy and can use help to move faster, from writing more tests for Amahi 7, to helping with marketing, to design, to packaging apps, to help planning for the tester program, to running the IRC bot, to helping with app testing automation. Lots of interesting cool stuff in a nice community!
Come by the IRC channel and get involved! In the mean time, enjoy Amahi 6.2!
Amahi Team
[*] This release is for the Amahi on Ubuntu release only (Fedora 14 is in maintenance mode). If you have Amahi on Ubuntu 6.1, the update is automatic you do not need to do anything (your HDA should have it by now – check under Setup > Settings).
jochen Oct 5
hi guys,
wil Amahi 7 be released to Fedora also?
cpg Oct 5
Yes!
> development is well under way on Amahi 7, based on Fedora 17 (or 18)
dnfalk Oct 5
Is the Amahi 6.2 –> 7 upgrade going to be able to be done live? Inquiring minds want to know!
cpg Oct 5
@dnfalk: Good question. The changes in Amahi 7 are way too large for us to provide a live update path. Several technology changes that are major (Rails 3, Ruby 1.9, switch to upstart/systemctl, etc.) will make that very very hard for our (small) team.
dnfalk Oct 5
Is there an estimated date of arrival for Amahi 7?
cpg Oct 5
@dnfalk: We have a prototype running about 80% complete, without new features, just reimplementation with the new technologies.
We are aiming for a release within the end of the month (October ’12)!
If it gets delayed, we may hop on Fedora 18, which is scheduled for the end of November.
We will probably try to make it work on Ubuntu 12.04LTS too, possibly after the Fedora release, unless it proves straightforward and we can get a lot of testing miles from the community.
herdivet Oct 5
I just had to say THANK YOU for the unbelievably fantastic product you have. I was running it on an old box with Fedora 14 and it was threatening to die. I set up a new box, and saw the announcement on the Ubuntu version. Well, in for a dime, in for a dollar I figured. I recalled the hours I spent getting everything just the way I wanted it on the old server, and figured I’d dig in and do it again.
In over 30 years working with computers, I’ve never had an installation go so smoothly. It was absolutely brilliant! It took next to no time at all and was just the way I wanted it, just they way I left it actually. Just running under a much newer operating system with much better hardware.
Congratulations to everyone at AMAHI. You’ve done an absolutely fantastic job!
Frank Mazzotti Oct 5
I’m still trying to stay with this product – I have the main install that happened on Fedora 14 – will there be an in place upgrade for this? I want to have as minimal a system footprint as possible. But I’m struggling to just invest in an off the shelf SAN like Synology or QNAP.
dr2chase Oct 5
Maybe a stupid question, but is there a quick-and-easy how-to for up/side-grading from Fedora to Ubuntu? In particular, I worry about all the data already stored in the Greyhole shares.
PatrickDickey Oct 5
For dr2chase,
I’d say the short answer is “No” for up/side-grading from Fedora to Ubuntu, because the only thing they really have in common is the kernel. As for losing your data, you *should* be able to disconnect any drives that are being used for data, and reconnect them after the installation is completed. Then run the greyhole commands for adding/swapping a hard drive, and it should find them and bring them into the system.
BEFORE you do anything, go to the irc channel and ask for the specifics on how to migrate your existing drives over to a new system (as that’s what you’ll be doing–even though the “new” system is on the same computer).
Have a great day:)
Patrick.
dr2chase Oct 5
Plan B, is what will it be like to upgrade from Fedora 14 to Fedora 16/17, and Amahi 7?
FrankM Oct 6
In future development towards the Ubuntu platform – I really liked the slim version that was provided originally built on Fedora.
cpg Oct 6
We do support the headless version of Ubuntu (called Ubuntu Server). More compact and quicker to install!
waspinator Oct 7
will amahi 7 have samba4?
bigfoot65 Oct 8
It is unlikely there will be an upgrade path from Fedora 14. Definitely cannot go from Fedora to Ubuntu or visa versa.
Greyhole shares data is safe, providing you follow the wiki guidance. Always disconnect the drives before installing a new OS and Amahi. Once complete, reconnect, mount, and then watch Greyhole do its thing.
Recommend we start a topic in the forums about upgrading and continue the dialogue there.
sidefx Nov 4
Just wanted to say what a brilliant job you folk are doing! I’ve been running Amahi for a number of months now and it really is outstanding. Big kudos to all involved.
cpg Nov 7
@sidefx Thanks for the kind words! We love to hear when Amahi is useful to users!
Chris Jan 11
Is there any new news on the Amahi 7 release? Your comment says you were shooting for end of October, but it’s the middle of January, and no news.
cpg Jan 14
Not yet, we did a test release on Fedora 17. Our goal was to align our release to Fedora 18. It was supposed to release in November. It is due to release tomorrow (Jan 15, ’13). We usually wait a few days or weeks for our release to see how stable the OS release is.
In this case, Amahi 7 is not entirely ready, because we took time to re-engineer most everything in it. So it’s hard to tell how many more weeks will take for us to get to a release. So far, we have user management and app installation ready to go. We need to work on the other parts of the interface, plus the packaging of the release, which can take some effort.
We are very excited about this release!