Set up a home server easily with Amahi (Linux)

hello and welcome to bite my pie these days more and more services seem to be moving to the cloud but there are still many advantages to running your own server at home speed security knowing where your data is actually stored to name just a few setting up a server can be quite an involved process but it doesn't have to be and that's where amahi comes in in this video we're going to install this easy to use free and open source software to create our very own home server so if this sounds appealing to you stick around okay let's jump straight in to get started open your web browser and we're going to search for amahi it's this one we want www.s from the home page you can click the big get started now button as it says it's free to sign up first we need to create a username this can be whatever you like so let's say that for demonstration purposes i'm going to use bite my pie just make sure that whatever you choose you don't have any spaces between the letters and i'd also suggest keeping it all lowercase as well this username will become a subdomain of yourhda.com what this means is that if you choose to access your home server remotely you'll do so by using this url so here we have bytemypie.yourhda.com next you need to enter your email address this needs to be a valid email as you'll need to verify it to set up the account next we need to create a password and then we need to confirm it by the way rather than keep clicking in each box you can press the tab key on your keyboard to move down to the next one and then we just need to answer the question in the last box which says here what is four plus three so i'll type seven you can view the terms of service by clicking here and if you're happy to continue click start now okay i don't want chrome to save the password before we sign in we need to go to our email that we just provided and you should see a message from this no reply to mahi.org if you don't see the email within a few minutes check your spam folder inside the email is an activation link so simply click this to finish setting up the account you'll be taken to a sign in prompt where you can either enter the username you just created or your email address and then pop in your password and click the sign in button to fill in the network settings we need to know a little bit about our home network so if you type cmd into the search box and press enter to open a command prompt and then we need to type the command ip config and press enter we can see that this computer has got the ip address 192.168.0.65 and we can also see that the default gateway or in other words the ip address of our home router is 192.168.0.1 so make a note of the default gateway address on your network now we need to choose an ip address for our amahi home server this needs to be something that's not currently in use so in this case i can't have it ending in one or in 65 to find a free ip address we're going to carry out what's known as a ping test so if you type in the word ping p i n g followed by a space and the address you'd like to use for your home server i'm going to try 192.168.0.10 and press enter this is what you want to see reply destination host unreachable because that means that the ip address we just tried to ping is not currently in use and therefore we can use it for our new home server once you've found a free address on your home network make a note of that as well and then you can close the command prompt right now that we've got that information we can fill out these settings here so the existing network gateway is the ip address of your router in my case that was 192 168 and then if i change that to 0.1 and then the address i'm going to use for my home server is 192.168.0.10 when you've entered your ip addresses you can click next now we need to enter a local domain name since this is for your home network you can call it what you like i'm going to call it the highly original home dot local it's standard practice to use the domain extension.local on a local area network or lan for short what you don't want to do in here is put the name of an external website for example if you were to put something like google.com it would prevent you from accessing the real google.com as the devices on your home network would think that it was being hosted locally when you're happy with what you've chosen click next here it's allowing us to double check the settings we've just entered and assuming they're all okay we can click create your hda profile this code is very important because we'll need it as part of the server installation process so jot it down and keep it somewhere safe you can even send yourself an email by clicking this link here when you're ready to proceed click on this link for the install instructions it tells us the latest stable release at the time of this recording is omahi 11 and it also shows us the relatively modest hardware requirements so let's click on get started as we're carrying out a fresh install and not an upgrade we need to click on this link directions to install omahi 11 or whatever the version number happens to be when you do this and if you scroll down the page you're looking for the download section it's the amahi express cd that we're after and you can see here that version 11 of omahi is actually based on fedora 27 server edition so next to direct download click on the iso link to begin the download i'm going to save it to my downloads directory that's going to take a few minutes so i'll pause the video and come back once it's complete okay now that we've got the iso file we need some software to enable us to copy it to a usb stick and for that in our web browser we're going to search for rufus it's this top link rufus dot ie if you scroll down the page to the download section we don't need to grab the full program instead we can download the portable version here we can save that to our downloads directory as well right let's close the web browser open file explorer and navigate to the downloads folder make sure that you've got a usb stick plugged into your computer you're going to want one of at least one gigabyte in size it's a good idea to make a new folder to put the rufus portable program inside i'm just going to call it rufus then we can click and drag the program into it so let's go inside the rufus folder and launch the software click on yes to proceed and we don't want to check for updates so you can click on no right it's auto detected my usb stick it's set to disk or iso image which is what we want so we can click on the select button browse to the downloads folder click on amahi and open make sure that the partition scheme is on mbr and that the target system is bios or uefi we can leave the volume label as is and likewise the file system and cluster size can stay on the default and now that we're ready to copy our iso image to the usb stick you can click on start to proceed rufus just needs to download a couple of extra files to continue so we can click yes to allow that here we get a warning that all of the data on the usb sticks going to be erased so make sure there's nothing important on there that you want to keep and then click ok this process will take a little while so i'll pause the video and come back when it's complete great now that that's done we can close the program and right click on the usb stick and eject it [Music] a quick word about the hardware before we install a mahi home server you'll probably want something with a lower powered processor as typically servers tend to run 24 7. while you could go out and buy new hardware you could also repurpose an older machine you don't need a truckload of ram amahi will run on as little as one gigabyte but i'd recommend four gig if it's available the main thing you want is storage so in terms of hard drives the bigger the better right let's install our home server pop the usb stick into the computer you want to install the mahi onto then turn on the power you want to make sure it's set to boot from the usb device not the internal hard drive and then you should see a menu like this so use your cursor keys on the keyboard to move up to installer mre 11 and then press enter to select it as this computer is going to be our home server really you want it plugged in with a cable to the router it's not a good idea to run it over wireless okay let's run through the installation wizard first we need to select our language and then click continue on this screen anything that's highlighted in red needs to be taken care of before we can begin the installation for the amari server setup section if we click on that this is where we need to enter that installation code that we made a note of earlier so pop yours in now and then we can click on done next i need to verify my keyboard if yours isn't listed you need to click on the plus sign to add it i just need to select the english uk and click done and now that begin installation is no longer greyed out we can click on that to proceed this may take a little while as it downloads packages and carries out the installation so i'll pause the video and come back when it's done the computer just automatically rebooted as part of the install process and as you can see on the screen it's now continuing the installation i'll pause the video again and come back when there's anything else to report okay the computer's just rebooted again when it gets to this menu here you can just let it automatically boot on the default option congratulations if you're seeing this logon prompt you've successfully installed a mahi home server and you can unplug your usb stick now that the server is installed back on our computer we need to set it up and configure it one of the great things about the umahi home server is that this can all be done through a web browser moving forward our new server will process all the dns requests on our local home network what that means is that instead of typing in an ip address for a device you'll be able to type in its name instead so since our new home server is called hda which stands for home digital assistant we should be able to reach that by typing in http colon double forward slash hda and pressing enter if that doesn't work don't worry it just means that your computer isn't picking up its settings from the new server yet if that's the case you can reach it through its ip address which hopefully you made a note of earlier so in my case that would be 192.168.0.10 and press enter doing so will display this extra message that's just letting us know that we're currently accessing the server through its ip address if i flick back to the other tab as you can see if we use the name hda we don't get that message to effectively use this new server as the central hub for our home network we need to let it take care of any dhcp or dynamic host configuration protocol requests when a device connects to your home network it's given an ip address and this is taken care of by the dhcp server up until now odds are it's been your router that's been doing that as we now want amahi to take over that role we need to turn it off in the router's settings so if we open a new tab let's do that now if you've never accessed your home router before you need to type its ip address into your web browser if you recall we found it earlier when we were looking for our network's default gateway so let's enter it now in my case that was 192.168.0.1 as you can see i'm running a pf sense router your interface will vary depending on the model you'll need your username and password if you're not sure what they are you can usually find them on the back of the router itself so enter those now and login you need to find your dhcp server settings on this router they're under services here and then we want to turn it off so i'm going to take the check out of the enable box and then scroll down the page and save my settings when you've done that you can log out of your router and close the tab to make sure that your computer is now getting its dhcp address and dns settings from the home server you can either reboot the pc or alternatively we can open a command prompt by typing cmd in the search box and pressing enter and then enter the following two commands the first one is ip config space forward slash release and press enter and the second one is ip config again but this time space forward slash renew and press enter again that's pulled in the new connection information from the server you can see not only is it giving us an ip address it's also showing us the name of our local network that we set earlier so if we close both the command prompt and the web browser and start again by typing http colon double forward slash hda and pressing enter this time even if it didn't work before you should now be looking at the amahi home server login screen and if you've made it this far you can give yourself a pat on the back because we've now completed the most difficult part of the setup like your router you'll now need to leave the server on all of the time for your home network to function correctly okay let's get logged in the username is lowercase admin and as this is the first time accessing the system we need to create a password so jot yours in here and then confirm it and then click on the create button from here we're going to click on setup to get things up and running you can see on the users tab that initially we only have this one user admin let's add another one by clicking on new user create a username i'm going to go with bite my pi then type the full name into the next box give the new user a password and then confirm it and when you've done that click on the create button and simple as that we have our new user before we go any further it's worth skipping over to the settings tab and checking the advanced settings box here then click ok as this gives us access to some useful extra features now let's go look at the shares tab next by default amahi handily sets up several shares for us we can view extra information about a share just by clicking on it out of the box all users can access these shares and they can also write to them if i wanted to make a share read only all i'd need to do is remove the tick from writable more usefully though if we take the tick out of all users we can now set the individual permissions on that shared drive you can see that the admin account has full read write access which is usually how you want to leave it at the moment bite my pie the new user i just set up also has full access to the books shared folder let's say we didn't want this particular user to have access to the book shared driver tool we can simply deselect the tick under access there's also an option to allow guests access to a shared drive this would obviously mean that anybody on your home network would be able to access it the visibility check box allows us to decide whether a share is hidden or not if i untick the box i'll show you what this does in practice to do this i'll open windows file explorer now if we click in the top bar and type backslash backslash the name of our home server which is hda and press enter windows then asks for the name of an account to connect to the server we could enter the admin account to basically give us full access you could use an account that you've set up so in my case bite my pie or alternatively you could enter something else entirely to see what access a guest would have so to try that out i'm just going to enter guest for the username and guest as well for the password if you'd entered one of your server accounts you may want to tick this box here to remember the credentials so you don't have to enter them again but since i only want to view this as a guest i'm just going to click ok so as you can see all of these shared folders are visible even to a guest that is except for the book shared folder because obviously we've made that one hidden but even though i can see the rest of these shared folders because i'm only logged on as a guest if i was to try looking inside one by double clicking on it i can't actually open it without entering an account that has permission to do so so this shows that guest access isn't actually enabled by default let's cancel out of that and close file explorer back in the share settings next down the list we have permissions this is a handy feature because sometimes on a network share you may get a file that's particularly awkward to delete clicking on this icon will reset the permissions on any files or folders within the share and that should fix the problem next down we've got tags you can see we've got music pictures videos etc books doesn't fall under any of those but if we were to scroll down to one of the other shared folders and expand movies you can see that that's ticked below tags it lists the actual location of the shared folder where it actually resides on the home server as you start to fill your server with content you may want to come into one of the shares and click this get the size to see how big that share is and then there's the option to add extra parameters if you want to get really advanced clicking back on a shares main bar will hide its settings to the right of the shares names we have their locations you may have already gathered that the location is how we search for the share across the network so when i had windows file explorer open before i typed backslash backslash hda to reveal the server's shares so here in file explorer again if i want to go to a specific share i can go backslash backslash hda backslash and then the name of the share so let's say i want to try movies and press enter and this time i'm going to enter the credentials for that my pi account that i set up so if i just pop the password in there and click ok and there we go i'm now in the movie shared folder ready to start setting up content i could create a new folder in here and call it my favorite films now if we go back to backslash backslash hda now that i'm connected to the home server using the buy my pi account you can see that it's even automatically set me up with a home directory for that account but if we go back again what i actually wanted to show you is that obviously we still can't see the book shared folder because we hid it but what we can do as long as the account has permission to access it is type in backslash books after the name of our server and press enter and i can still access that shared folder even though it's actually hidden on our network while it's very nice that amahi has automatically created these shares for us you might not want them all so let's say i'm never going to store any tv content on the server if i click to expand that we've got this option over on the right to delete the share in this case delete tv and if i click on that we get a warning that we're about to delete the share note that although the share will no longer be available any files that you've got stored inside of it will not be deleted also note that you cannot undo this action so if you're 100 positive you no longer want that particular share click ok and just like that tv has now gone from the list if on the other hand you'd like to add an additional share say for example you've got a hobby that you'd like to create your own shared drive for if you click on the new share button down here you can give it a name so i'll just call it hobby then you can decide if you want this share to be visible or hidden on your home network and also whether you want it to be read only or not and then click on the create button and as if by magic we now have a hobby network share naturally if we expand that we can set the various permissions so i can choose who has access to this new drive and precisely what kind of access they have i hope you're starting to see how useful this level of control can be on a home network by setting up multiple user accounts you could give family members different levels of access to the data on the server before we leave the shares area let's just take a quick peek in the settings tab by default this work group name is just set to work group it's a good idea to set this to the same name that we used for our local dns name earlier so if i click on that in my case that was home.local you don't need to enter the extension so for me i just need to put home and then click on change next along we have the disks tab i only have one hard disk in the server so that's not very exciting it's listed as dev sda you can click on the partitions tab to show you how any of the hard drives in the server are partitioned as you can see from the sizes in the total column my server has a one terabyte hard drive this has been split into three partitions sda1 sda3 and sda5 the first is the boot partition which as the name suggests contains the files necessary for the server to boot next is the root partition this is where the fedora operating system resides then there's the home partition which is by far the largest because it's where the data in the shared drives is located right let's move along to the apps tab the apps section is a nice touch in amahi as it allows us to add extra functionality to our home server if we flick over to the installed tab you'll note that out of the box there aren't any apps installed so let's go back to what's available scrolling down the list you can see that there's quite a selection in here when you find one that you're interested in let's say we'd like to set up a web calendar for example click on it to reveal more details clicking on the plus sign will take you to the umahi website where you can get more information let's close that tab and go back and then when you're ready to install an app it's as easy as clicking on the install button now that that's installed it gives us the link here to access it so you could make a note of that but by leaving this box ticked it also lists it in the dashboard and i'll show you where that is in a moment obviously if you no longer want an app you can click the uninstall button to remove it if we scroll back up we also have this link here to get apps it's worth noting that the software in this list is available at no charge and this is where you would install the free apps from however if you'd like access to the full range of apps available that's where get apps comes in clicking this link will take you to the applications section of the umahi website you'll need to sign in to see the prices of any paid for apps so just enter the username or email address and then the password of the account that you set up earlier and then click sign in there's some quite useful information in here and we'll take a look at some of this a little later in the video but for now we just want to click on the apps tab at the top of the screen as you can see we now have prices for the apps that are chargeable if you decide you want to make a purchase you first need to add credit to your account which you can do by clicking on this button here but i'm going to sign out and return to the home server if we look in the installed tab now you can see i've got the web calendar app on my server and i can click on an installed app to get more information about it so to use this particular app i'm going to need a username and password and it tells me that those are admin and admin this plus sign here is different from the one below the bottom one is what we already saw where it gives us an overview of the app whereas if i click this plus at the top it's more specific information in this case with regards to the app's user account and password now if we go back let's go take a look at that dashboard i mentioned before to do that we just need to come up to the top and click on home i'm not sure why we get this latest news section block here when the content is very old these articles are linked to the amahi blog whereas the current content all seems to be on the umahi forum these days but this is the part we're interested in we've now got this new shortcut to the web calendar app that i just installed if i click on that it should launch the web calendar and what do you know it hasn't but if you notice the url in the address bar has changed to web calendar i'm actually glad that that's happened because i'll show you the procedure to perform that should fix it with any newly installed app you want to give it a little bit of time to get up and running usually just a few minutes will do before you try to access it but if that doesn't work it's the good old off and on again yes you guessed it we're going to restart the server so make sure that you're back on the hda home server tab and not the web calendar one then we're going to go back into setup onto the settings tab and in here we've got these two power buttons so we've got shutdown and restart so obviously click the restart one and click ok to proceed give it a moment or two for the server to reboot it's always a good time to grab a coffee and then you can refresh the web browser to see if it's back online and if the page refreshes you good to go if it doesn't you can try refreshing again until it comes back up okay let's go back to the dashboard and we'll try the web calendar again and there you go just like that we're back in business and if i use the username and password of admin i should be able to log in splendid one successfully installed app so even if you don't fancy a calendar hopefully you can see how easy it is to set up an app of your choice clicking this try the all new applications title will take us back to the apps tab of our server right next along we've got the network tab in here first we've got the dhcp leases which shows us any devices connected to our home network in my case at the moment that's just my pc here then we have a fixed ips section so if you wanted to add any static non-changing ip addresses on your home network you can do so here then we've got dns aliases this is where you can set names for your devices there's already some in here for the home server the router and the web calendar these can be very useful as it allows us to communicate with these devices on our home network using the names rather than the ip addresses to quickly demonstrate this if i open a command prompt let's just move that across to the side and run a quick ping test and i'll ping hda our home server and press enter you can see that even though i've pinged the name of the server it's replying on the ip address so we've got hda responding on 192.168.0.10 if i wanted to make a new entry for another device i could click on this button here then lastly in the network section we've got the settings tab this contains the configuration for the dhcp server so obviously it's turned on by default it issues an ip address to a device connected to your network for 14 hundred seconds it uses open dns as the dns provider you can click the drop down list here if you'd rather use another one the gateway ip address is that of our home router which we set earlier at the bottom we've got the range of addresses that can be handed out so anywhere between 100 and 254 if we bring up the command prompt again just move that to the side i can demonstrate that my computer has been given an ip address within that range by typing ip config and pressing enter and there you have it the ip address ends in 194 which is obviously between 100 and 254 by the way any of these values can be changed by clicking on them but unless you've got a good reason for doing this it's probably best to leave them alone and the last tab is settings we've dipped into this details section a couple of times already but aside from turning on advanced settings or powering off and restarting the server you can also set the language in here guest dashboard is a nice feature if you check this box here it allows anybody on the home network to access the server's dashboard now don't panic that doesn't mean they can get into these settings but if you've set up some server apps it allows them to access any shortcuts you've created to those so let's just take a quick peek what that looks like to do this we just need to log out of the server so if we come down to the bottom and click on where it says log out admin and as you can see we're at the hda address for our server but instead of seeing the login screen we're viewing the emahi dashboard if i just refresh the page this is what anyone on your home network will see if they type the server's address into their web browser there's no link at the top to set up so they can't get to your server's settings and even if they click login down here at the bottom they won't have the admin account information to get in that way either to log in as admin when you've got the guest dashboard enabled you can either click the login button as i just did to get to this screen or alternatively you can type in hda forward slash login into the address bar so if we go back to the dashboard you can see that anybody on the home network would be able to access the shortcut for the web calendar okay let's log back in as admin once you've entered the password you don't have to click the login button you can just press the enter key on your keyboard now that we're logged back into the admin account we can click the setup button that's returned to the top bar and let's go back to the settings tab obviously if you don't want to leave the guest dashboard turned on you can uncheck the box there lastly on the settings details tab we've got some system information so along with version numbers we've got uptime which tells us how long the server has been switched on let's flick over to the settings servers tab this will show you any services that you've got running on your server at the moment this is just the file server this is the software that operates the network shared drives it's known as samba and we can click on it to show us more information if you ever have a problem with your file shares it's worth coming in here and clicking on the restart button rather than restarting the whole server this will just restart the file sharing service and then the last tab in the settings section is themes there are three themes built in we've got beach air jordan and air jordan vertical by default omari is using air jordan but if you fancy a change just click on one of the others that's it from our heat settings now let's familiarize ourselves with the rest of the server's web interface on the top bar we've got home which as we saw earlier takes us to the dashboard next along is a search box this can be very handy as you start to fill up your server with data to demonstrate i've put a picture in the picture shared directory i've called it dog so i'll enter that into the search bar and then i'll click on the hda button to search the server for it there it is dog.jpg and we've got the exact location underneath if you search for a file and it doesn't show up try entering the name and the file extension so in this case that would have been dog dot jpg if the file is an image you can right click on it and copy the link address and then if you open a new tab and paste that in there you can view your picture or alternatively if you right click on the little folder icon instead and again copy the link address open a new tab and paste that in there you can view the directory that the picture is located in through your web browser this could be useful if you'd got several images in that directory as you could select each one in turn and then go back to click the next if we close that to go back to our server tab there's another nice touch if we return to the search box let's enter the search term dog again but this time click on the web button it goes out to google to look for results there back on our server next along we've got setup hopefully the setup section is starting to look familiar now next in the top bar we've got help clicking on this takes us to the amahi wiki where you should be able to find most of the answers you're looking for and then at the top right of the amahi home server interface we've got the apps link which being part of setup should again be recognizable on the bottom bar there's a link to your control panel this is part of your amahi online account so we need to sign in using the credentials we created earlier and then to the password we saw this control panel briefly before when we were looking at paid for apps a couple of things worth noting in here if you do plan on accessing your server remotely you'll need this dynamic dns address if you recall we created this at the beginning of this video to get started setting up your home server to be accessible from the internet you can check out the remote access section on the amahi wiki the other thing worth noting in your accounts control panel is the alert section down here if you've got any alerts you can simply click on them to see what they are but i'm not going to do that now as it contains sensitive information okay let's sign out of that and close the tab next on the bottom bar we've got a feedback link you'd need to be signed into your mahi account to use this but in doing so this gives you the facility to send feedback to the team behind the software next along we've got the wiki unlike the help section we looked at earlier clicking this link takes us to the main page then we've got tracker from here you can keep an eye on the latest bug and feature updates next along we have a handy troubleshooting link this is divided into common problems then if we scroll down a bit we've got issues related to specific releases of omahi and then below that there's helpful references if you don't have any looking troubleshooting there's a live help option amari has an irc or internet relay chat channel and to join it you simply need to create a nickname i'll just go with help me please then tick the i'm not a robot box and complete the lovely capture then click start to join the channel supposed to come into a question you just type in the box here and then press enter to send it if the irc doesn't come to your rescue you can try the forums there's lots of topics and posts going on in here so hopefully somebody will have the answer you're looking for if you want to post a message you'll need to log in with your amahi account then at the right hand side of the bottom bar as we saw earlier this is how you log out and that ends our guided tour of the omahi home server web interface okay we've already seen how to connect to our home server from a windows pc now let's look at the process on an android device if i launch google's play store there is an amahi app but as i've never had much luck with that i'm going to show you another way so we'll search for file manager and it's this one we want by the flashlight and clock developer so let's install that if i come out of the play store there should be a shortcut on the home screen if you don't see it have a look in your app drawer right let's open the file manager app we need to give it permission to access the files on the device and inside the app you should see this remote icon let's select that to connect to our home server we need to add a remote location and the protocol we're using to connect is smb or server message block so for host we enter the name of our server which is hda and connect to an individual share we want to put forward slash and the name of the share after it so i'll go with pictures next you need to enter a username or you could put in the admin account i'd suggest using one that you've created yourself on the server i'm going to go with byte my pi then pop in your password for that account if you wanted to connect as a guest instead you could check the anonymous box and then we need to select more entering the domain name of your home network is optional but if you want to you can put it in here and again although optional i'd recommend entering a display name this will allow you to easily identify your network shared folder so i'm just going to call mine pictures and then choose ok you can see straight away that it's connected to the pictures share on my server i can select the dog photo that we saw earlier if i go back and select the little house now if we go back into the remote section of the file manager app you can see that it saved the connection to the pictures directory on the server and it's now accessible from the android device let's go back once more obviously we could go through this process again and add other shared drives be aware that your android smartphone or tablet will need to be connected to your home wi-fi in order for this to work also note that the free version of the file manager app does contain relatively unobtrusive ads but if you really don't like advertising for a one-off fee these can be removed if you happen to be rocking an iphone or an ipad fret not because there's an app available for you too it's called fe file explorer and is just a download away on apple's app store just before we wrap up this video i'd like to cover a couple of troubleshooting steps in case things don't go entirely to plan the first is with regards to accessing the home server remotely if the web interface stops working to do this we need to open the command prompt on windows and we're going to use the ssh or secure shell command so type ssh followed by a space and the name of the admin account which is admin at and then you can put either the ip address of the home server or its host name so i'm just going to put hda and press enter because this is the first time we're connecting from this computer in this way we need to type yes to say that we want to continue and press enter again then you just need to enter the password and press enter once more and if you're looking at this line here admin local host followed by a flashing cursor you're successfully logged in to the terminal on the home server we can clear the screen by simply entering the word clear it's never a good idea to just yank the plug out from any running computer but that goes doubly so on a server so the command i'm going to show you here is how to reboot the server from the terminal and it's as easy as entering two words the first is sudo followed by space and then reboot then when you hit the enter key all that's left to do is pop in the admin password and press enter once more the second troubleshooting step i'd like to cover is how to set up a static ip address on your computer this is just a precaution because if you recall we turned off the dhcp service on the router and let the home server handle it now while this usually shouldn't cause you any issues if your home server was to ever stop working you'd need to do this in order to access your router to turn its dhcp server back on a telltale sign that your computer's not automatically getting an ip address can be seen if we hover down on the taskbar over the network icon as it clearly states not connected don't automatically assume that this is a problem with your dhcp server though it could equally be a flaky wi-fi connection or a faulty network cable if you've got another device to hand it's always worth trying that before assuming there's a problem with your home server right to configure our computer to use a static ip address we need to click the start menu and go into windows settings from there we need to access network and internet then network and sharing center and lastly click on change adapter settings now depending on how many network adapters your computer has they'll be listed in here as you can see i've only got one this is a wired connection if you're using a laptop it'll have wireless but it may well have a wired one as well you need to right click on the adapter that your computer is connecting to your home network through and then select properties in here you're looking for the internet protocol version 4 or ipv4 so select that and then click on properties so the adapter is currently set to obtain its address automatically which is as it should be what we need to do is select the use the following ip address option and then if you click in the first segment of the ip address box we can type in a static address the router on my network is on 192.168.0.1 so i'm going to set this to 192.168.0.2 by the way i'm just pressing the full stop key for the dot then if i click at the start of the subnet mask box it's automatically filled that in for me typically a home network will have a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 so if you're not seeing this you'll need to fill it in and then the default gateway for my network is 192.168.0.1 so enter yours in there you don't need to put in a dns address in order to access the router but just so that we've got the internet and everything working we can enter one here let's go with google's 8.8.8.8 and then we can click ok and click close to finish at this point it's worth doing a refresh on the network adapter to make sure it's accepted the changes to do this you could reboot the computer but it's quicker to right click on it and choose disable and when it's grayed out right click on it again and this time select enable at this stage i'd leave all these windows open because this is only a temporary measure from here you can open a web browser enter the ip address of your router and press enter and from here you could turn the router's dhcp back on once you've finished don't forget to go back into the network adapter right click properties back to ipv4 properties then just return the settings to automatic and click ok and close to finish while you could disable and enable the network adapter again there's not a lot of point this time because even if it hasn't updated it'll do so when you next power cycle the computer so let's just close all of the windows and that brings us to the end of this video i hope you're starting to see the benefits of running your own server at home especially with one as easy to use as the open source omahi but maybe you'd sooner set up a network attached storage box instead of a home server historically these devices were even easier to set up due to their relatively limited functionality yet as nas technology continues to advance and servers in the home environment at least become ever more straightforward to use the boundaries between the two are increasingly beginning to blur if you'd like to compare and contrast check out another of my videos entitled set up your own network attached storage with openmediavault there's a link in the description below whichever route you take have fun expanding the potential of your home network as always if you enjoyed this video please like and subscribe and if you'd like to be notified when i post the next one just click on the bell icon thanks for watching and until next time take care [Music] you

Channel: Byte My Pi

Views: 10,463

Rating: 4.8974357 out of 5

Keywords: amahi, amahi 11, home server, server, samba, network share, linux, fedora, windows, file explorer, file manager, fe file explorer

Id: 8AJuDsWZMIU

Length: 54min 9sec (3249 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 27 2020