User:Spatialguru

What to talk? Meet me in IRC or leave a note on my discussion page. You can also read my personal (non-Amahi) blog at spatialguru.com.

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My Apps

I've packaged these applications for easy use within Amahi:

• Maps - for demonstration purposes only - embedding a free mapping tool (OpenLayers) that uses free map data in a simple page.
• Blog - for running a WordPress blogging environment.
• Mediawiki - for running an alternative to the built-in Amahi MoinMoin wiki. You can use the popular Mediawiki platform instead through this package.
• WebVNC - a Java-based web client for VNC server access across platforms. Using TightVNC package.

I've looked at several others as well and will add more when my needs arise. Since many require databases, I focus on using ones that can handle SQLite so that you don't need to configure the Amahi MySQL db at all.

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I started using and testing Amahi in Sept. 09 - starting with helping to test Fedora 9. Enough about that... I'm using the rest of this page to keep bookmarks for related technology I'm looking at trying to use with Amahi. Or just fun looking stuff that would be cool to do with it.

Branding

• Setting Firefox default home page URL to amahi.org.
  • Would be cool to set the live bookmarks and other defaults as well
  • See FirefoxDefaults for my progress.
• <a>Set desktop icon for Amahi Setup to point to app launcher Firefox -> HDA address.

Applications

• ImapServer - based on these instructions and this email
• What will be done for installing new web apps? Will there be a common online repository location? Any sort of validation/certification of the app? This could be where HDA really takes off, so I'm thrilled to see the web-app setup tab working well.
  • A gallery is already underway at: amahi.org/apps which provides overviews and links to web-apps.
• Remote applications - in some cases it may be worth investigating an easy solution for running X Window apps from the HDA remotely on client machines. The best cross-platform solution I can think of is having HDA host a pre-configured copy of QEMU that has a mini distribution of Linux, like DSL with an X server included. Then it would connect to HDA automatically and do something. Thereby reducing the complexity of having to use X or VNC manually. Of course, the VNC approach may be okay too.
• IRC Support Chat - include a basic IRC proxy server that automatically connects to the #amahi channel for real time web-based chatting with project support team! Currently testing CGI IRC Perl approach
• RSS Feed Reader - e.g. FOSS Gregarius. Need simple way to run Python apps without installing to primary system Python libs.
• Email reader - e.g. Posterity. Need simple way to run Python apps without installing to primary system Python libs.
• Surveying and polling
• eGroupware - group ware document management, email and more.
• webmin - unix configuration web interface
• Mediawiki - the default wik platform on Amahi is the MoinMoin wiki. It's easy to install Mediawiki as well, using the new web-apps functionality of Amahi. There is still a bit of manual configuration - a couple command line steps, but this will be improved in the near future. See the Amahi Mediawiki app page.
• Email gateway for receiving transfers from you@yourhda.com
  • with imap and pop support
• IRC proxy server for maintaining persistent connections to IRC channels and logs.
  • Preconfigure kopete (or whatever a default IRC app is) to use this proxy
• Invoicing tool - e.g. Bamboo Invoice

Backups

• PBA backups don't seem possible with default Mac OS X 10.x BIOS, so maybe running Netboot server on HDA would help somehow. Probably not helpful with backups, but at least letting, say, a Macbook network boot would be really cool.
  • Mac OS X BSDP Service using a GNU/Linux Server
  • Etherboot howtos
  • system rescue cd might be able to boot it, then let PBA take over. tried but didn't get too far
• I also wonder if some sort of VM could be run on any client and that would help run some more complex rsync incrementals.. hmm

Networking

• I don't know where it's at already, but Printer Sharing must be high on some lists. I know I'm sick of having to have a printer tethered to my computer :)
• I'd like some sort of name resolution redundancy so that when HDA goes down, my PCs can at least still surf the 'net. Does that mean having a secondary DNS setup in DHCP?
• volume management need easy tools for adding new volumes, e.g external drives and setting user parameters, etc. Also do an automated sharepoint mapping samba/nfs for them. Idea being that a user can plug it in and not do anything on the desktop itself.
  • NFS shares are defined in /etc/exports. Would be good to have exports that mirror the samba shares - to give more options. I know on Mac it seems to handle NFS quicker.
• Squid proxy server can reduce external bandwidth and improve local performance for web browsing. It is installed by default in FC9. It would be good to have for home networks.
  • Update: Some simple configuration worked well for basic browsing. However the various HDA-specific names in the DNS failed. Read more on the SquidConfiguration page.
• Monitoring of HDA, plus all hosts in HDA subnet, including uptime, failures, etc. using something like Nagios
• VNC applications are pretty critical to running headless servers sometimes. I looked into some of the options and followed the basic logic from this article talking about how to set up a Java-based client in a web browser - e.g. so you don't have to download some platform specific thing. Worked great. Jst a bit complex on the server side to get vnc going.
  • I'm working on this here: HDA WebVNC

Mapping Applications

• I put together this simple web-mapping application demo: HDA Maps
  • Using OpenLayers and a few simple web mapping services for data. All open source and open data.
• Future ideas, allow data upload to home folder, then run my custom indexing scripts, add them to the map
• Set up a basic WFS (and WMS) that allows users to edit vectors on the map and save them to the HDA.

Wireless

• Boy, what could be done if HDA supports wireless??

VPN & Security

• Some systems don't support OpenVPN but rather want IPSec-based VPN.
  • It might be worth investigating the use of FreeS/WAN VPN architecture. Wouldn't it be cool to support BOTH with Amahi! Then I assume a large swath of potential enterprise software would connect to it (including my phone!).

Built-Ins

• Contacts / Address book would be very useful, especially for home networks. Icing on the cake: I've seen some really neat integration with PDF output too, to print address labels. (that was through CivicRM stuff)
• Alarms - perhaps in combination with the calendar app, there is some way to "inject" calendar alarms into web pages! E.g. maybe adding a frame or something to a page your request, or throwing out a pop-up, etc. I have no clue if this is possible but it would be similar to captive portal wifi node idea used (annoyingly) in hotels.
• Web bookmark system for sharing with other in your network.

Key Management

It would nice for the user management web tools to make it easy to access users public ssh keys, especially if there can be some good instructions for installing them. Perhaps this could be used to mount drives easier without having to log in.

Databases & Code

• Sometime people like to have their own little databases - e.g. for a small workgroup. So, like the file sharing capabilities I would like to see some phpMysql sort of apps that allow simple creation of tables and GUIs for running basic reports. I haven't done this in a long time, so I'm unaware of what is available, but keeping it listed here for a rainy day. I think it would be a cool app for small biz examples.
  • preferably using sqlite so that the app & db could be portable or shared
• SVN server - I think the server is already installed just needs configurating?