CLI and general feedback

[shredhead]

I like this firmware. No glitz like the stock firmware, and most of
what you do is command line. I think a few things are sort of buried
too many clicks deep in the web gui, SAMBA being one, but then again
you don't change settings for that very often.

In general, my hope for Alt-F is that you will have more packages that
can be configured via web gui, even though it might be more clicks
than I want. It just saves the trouble of logging in via SSH. In that
same line of thinking, it would be great to have a listing of what's
running on the box (like TOP) within the gui. Also a throughput graph
like what I have on my router (Tomato firmware). Make this optional
since it burns cpu to generate it over and over.

I noticed there's no correlation of the Alt-F and FFP packages. So you
could install the same package from both and have them fight if you
aren't careful.

One more thing I'd like to see is something on the status page that
ties into NUT and some ability in the gui to configure NUT. I think
there would be a fair number of folks like me who have their NAS
connected to a UPS and want to set up graceful shutdown, know whether
we're on battery power, and the like.

Overall I am very happy with this and look forward to updates.

[Joao Cardoso]

On Feb 25, 1:40 pm, shredhead <jso...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I like this firmware. No glitz like the stock firmware,

I'm bald, you see? :-)

> and most of
> what you do is command line. I think a few things are sort of buried
> too many clicks deep in the web gui, SAMBA being one,

Bookmark the page. That's new (and does not bookmarks embedded web
pages)

> but then again
> you don't change settings for that very often.
>
> In general, my hope for Alt-F is that you will have more packages that
> can be configured via web gui, even though it might be more clicks
> than I want. It just saves the trouble of logging in via SSH. In that
> same line of thinking, it would be great to have a listing of what's
> running on the box (like TOP) within the gui.

System->Utilities->View Logs->Running Process -- it's "top"
arg... bookmarking it does not works :-(

> Also a throughput graph

I will not do that (although there is contributed code that does that)

> like what I have on my router (Tomato firmware). Make this optional
> since it burns cpu to generate it over and over.
>
> I noticed there's no correlation of the Alt-F and FFP packages. So you
> could install the same package from both and have them fight if you
> aren't careful.

There is no "principled" approach to avoid that, and I don't think
that a casuistic approach is manageable, so yes, you have to be
careful.

The worse situation is existing ffp installations that collides with
Alt-F during boot time, as ffp services are automatically started.
Installing ffp from within Alt-F is not that dangerous, as the
installation process disables all ffp services.

> One more thing I'd like to see is something on the status page that
> ties into NUT and some ability in the gui to configure NUT. I think
> there would be a fair number of folks like me who have their NAS
> connected to a UPS and want to set up graceful shutdown, know whether
> we're on battery power, and the like.

Is NUT working? Alt-F "nuts" package? Nice! I couldn't test it (and
can't write the GUI) as I don't have a UPS myself.

[shredhead]

Actually, I think I've found that nut isn't working. My problem is I work on this for a little while then very long periods of time go by before I later discover I didn't set something else up correctly or that it isn't functional. I have renewed interest since I'm running out of space and about to pop in two hard drives. As many do when they buy a new hard drive, they go with a clean OS load, so I was thinking the NAS/Alt-F setup could be clean and new as well. 

So nut doesn't work. I think I tried a while back to get it working but could not so I gave up. I've not spent a ton of time so far, but I found that there is no startup script. 

# rcnut

/etc/init.d/S??nut not found.

Beyond that there must be a conflict between the capability of using USB storage devices vs. using the (one and only) USB port for something else like this..

# upsdrvctl start

Network UPS Tools - UPS driver controller 2.6.1

Network UPS Tools - Generic HID driver 0.35 (2.6.1)

USB communication driver 0.31

Can't claim USB device [051d:0002]: could not detach kernel driver from interface 0: Operation not permitted

Driver failed to start (exit status=1)

The above looks for the driver specified in /etc/ups.conf which in my case is usbhid-ups. (I have an APC Back UPS 350.)

FFP does not have nut available, so if it doesn't work as part of Alt-F I guess I need to wait until it does. Note that the UPS still works, you just don't get monitoring of the battery nor graceful shutdown. 

Maybe someone else who has a ups can assist with this? João said he does not own a ups. I can't write code...

thanks. 

[João Cardoso]

On Friday, March 28, 2014 3:17:32 PM UTC, shredhead wrote:

Actually, I think I've found that nut isn't working. My problem is I work on this for a little while then very long periods of time go by before I later discover I didn't set something else up correctly or that it isn't functional. I have renewed interest since I'm running out of space and about to pop in two hard drives. As many do when they buy a new hard drive, they go with a clean OS load, so I was thinking the NAS/Alt-F setup could be clean and new as well. 

So nut doesn't work. I think I tried a while back to get it working but could not so I gave up. I've not spent a ton of time so far, but I found that there is no startup script. 

# rcnut

/etc/init.d/S??nut not found.

Beyond that there must be a conflict between the capability of using USB storage devices vs. using the (one and only) USB port for something else like this..

Not sure, because USB attached printers works.

But I have to unload the usblp kernel module (that is loaded by default) to use CUPS (not sure if it's CUPS), so try 'rmmod usblp' and try nut again (and please report back)

[shredhead]

# rmmod usblp

rmmod: can't unload 'usblp': unknown symbol in module, or unknown parameter

hmm... it must not be loaded.