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Project: Khuti - File Media Server.
By Vincent Angus Williams - scribe63

Screenshots: VIEW

Testing iFolder3:
After typing http://host.local.net/admin in a web browser, i was greeted with an iFolder login page. I logged in as admin and got the iFolder Server Administration page, and proceded to setting up users. I was able to get some basic things happenining, i created a new user and an ifolder for that user. Since this application is new to me, i assume a slight learning curve about setting up and utilising it features.

Building the iFolder client.
I will attempt to build a client with Bonjour support on my Edubuntu 6.06-1 laptop, and will also check to see if a 3.5 client is available for another laptop which is running openSuSE 10.1. I started to build the client, and even though i installed the required packages, i still got errors that they were missing.
The cuplrit being libflaim. 'checking for LIBFLAIM... configure: error: Package requirements (libflaim >= 4.8.0) were not met:'
After unsuccessful a couple attempts to fix this issue, i went against the grain and used alien to convert the available .rpm packages to .deb packages. They converted without any issues, and before i installed them i removed the previuos packages thet were installed and proceded. I installed log4net, libflaim, simias, simias-bonjour, ifolder3, and nautilis-ifolder3, without any complaints.

I used the web browser interface to create an account for a test-user and initially assigned '/var/lib/simias/SimiasFiles/c02dff9e-f948-4a65-bb9a-1afeb77fa353/, as a test location, which created the above cryptic folder name.
After installation of the client, i found the ifolder3 icon under programming in the menu items. I clicked the menu icon, and the ifolder3 icon appeared in the notification area. I right clicked on it and was presented with a couple of options, iFolders, Account Settings, Synchronization Log, Preferences, Help, About, and Quit.
I started with Account Settings, this opened a window for configuring Accounts and Preferences. Then i clicked the help icon, it open in firefox and repeatedly could not finish connecting to something, eating up bit of CPU cycles and memory in the process, until i clicked the stop button.
This still happens off and on.

I then proceded to add a new account, and was asked for server and identity information. After several tries i was able to connect to the server.
Next i'll upload a directory of files from my workstation and access or download using the client on a laptop. I eventually attempted uploading a folder to the iFolder Central Server, and the folder and files uploaded.

I started to access it from the laptop, but the client would not start, with some strange error message in reference to gnome-sharp. After some research, the package gtk-sharp2 was missing, so i installed it. The client then started by placing an icon in the notification area, but when click i kept getting a message the 'ifolder is starting' over and over again for at least 20 minutes. Even after i killed the process the icon remained in the notification area and i still kept getting the same message.
When i did 'ps -aux | grep ifolder' there is no ifolder process, and when i tried to start it from the command line i get a message 'iFolder is already running. Go figure. So i will try logging out and logging back in.
After logging back i tried starting ifolder from the command line, but got a couple error messages 'Sound device inadequate for Esound. Fatal', Cannot start local webservices', and 'The simias process failed to initialized'.
It suggested that i use the command line switch --showconsole to view the error.
After doing some more research i installed a couple more mono packages and eventually had access to the client, but there were still errors in reference to sound.

I proceded to set up an account for the server, and was able to connect, view, and download the folder i uploaded from my workstation.
I then tried viewing the files again, this time using the webbrowser on the laptop, and i was able to view the uploaded files. There wasn't any option to download files for editing only uploading.
The next test would be to access the iFolder Server from a remote location, this will require research on how to get the service through a firewall, if it needs a dynamic or static ip address, port numbers, and whether it's best to place the server in a DMZ.

Testing SimpleGroupware.
I will now issue 'http://remote-host/SGS/' to finish configuring.
The initial webpage came up, it did it's own phpinfo check, and i had to install to missing modules pgp5-gd and php5-pgsql. After those were installed i was able to move on and continue the configuration by clicking the link for my language. The next page brought up the setting for the database, the username and password for admin and i had to agree to the license. I inputted the required info and accepted the license, but when i got to the next page i got an error that i had to 'CREATE LANGAUGE plpgsql' in the sgs database, so i did that and the configuration continued.
Now that SGS is configured and up and running, it looks like it has a lot of features that i would use, so i'll have go through it's demos and manual to get a feel for the application. Wonderful

Testing SSHFS.
Thus far i have installed and configured this system for access by three methods. I'll will now test SSHFS to experience remote access and file management from this perspective also.
To make this happen, openssh-server was already installed and running on the remote system.
#apt-get install sshfs
on the client, added needed users to fuse group
#adduser username fuse
created directory for mount point
#mkdir /mnt/mnt-point
changed ownership of said directory
#chown user:group /mnt/mnt-point
I had previously generated private/public keys on the client system, so i ran
$ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.key user@remote-host
to sync the keys with this particular client. I tested logging into the remote-host authenticating via the keys with
$ssh user@remote-host
and it worked fine.
So i proceded to mount a directory on the remote-host like so
$sshfs user@remote-host:folder/to/mount
got authenticated, fired up konqueror and was able to browse and manipulate files on the remote system as if it were a local system.
The only snags i experienced thus far were with symlinks.
This is so wonderful.

Now i will do a simple test, to if it's possible to access the remote server with WinSCP from virtualized WinXP install using vmware server. I fired up vmware server, but it failed to start because the kernel on this system had just got updated, so i ran vmware-config.pl to re-build the vnmon vmware modules. After rebuilding module, vmware server started and i sure was able to access the remote host with WinSCP for browsing and manipulating.
This is slightly different from sshfs but it good to go.
Seems like i may not have to install samba on the server after all.

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