iFolder Appliance 0.0.9

July 21st, 2009 by sshaw Leave a reply »

Well, its been a month.  I figured its about time to push out another iFolder appliance with the latest and greatest.  The change log information since the last release on the iFolder Release Stuff page.  There are only two changes in the appliance: The latest packages of ifolder and I changed the version of the 64bit images to match the 32ibt images.

Links:

32 bit:

vmware /  disk image /  Live image /  xen image

64 bit:

vmware /  disk image /  Live image

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  • http://www.sesp.northwestern.edu Ryan Nix

    Stephen,

    Thanks so much for doing this. Would you mind adding the Bridging Utilities to the next release?

    http://en.opensuse.org/Virtualbox_Network_Bridging

    It took me a while to figure out why Virtual Box’s Bridged Networking feature wouldn’t work with the appliance.

    Thanks again!

    - Ryan

  • Mirko

    Hi Stephen,

    where can I find the data to login to the iFolder Appliance, after I started it in a VM?

    Is there something to configure – or can I use it “out of the box” ?

    Thanks in advance!

    Mirko

  • http://www.decriptor.com sshaw

    @Mirko there is another blog post on my site, http://www.decriptor.com/2009/07/22/basic-ifolder-howto-finally/ , that is a step by step. You should find most everything there for a basic setup, but if not please let me know.

  • http://www.decriptor.com sshaw

    @Ryan Nix the only concern I have with this is if the person isn’t using virtualbox. I don’t really have a VB image. I’ve just been using the vmware image in VB. I’ll look through the link some more and see if maybe just providing a script that sets this up will work.

  • http://weblog.vkimball.com Vince Kimball

    Has anyone used the ifolder appliance running in a KVM instance? Which format works best?

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  • Anders

    Hi. Great news that there is an appliance available! However, the download URLs don’t seem to work. :(

  • http://www.decriptor.com sshaw

    @Anders sorry about that. After a period of time suse studio deletes the appliance. I’ve rebuilt several and the rest should be finishing up.

  • Gerhard

    Hi! Great that that stuff is avialable. But I ran into troubles when trying to open https:\\ip-adress\ifolder. Got a login window, enter the username and password but the result I got was a Runtime error in ifolder application. Admin works well, also the client can connect to the server and syncs. (even on windows 7)
    Uses the VM image on VM Server on a windows host.
    Any idea whats wrong?
    Gerhard

  • http://www.jrweldy.net Jay Weldy

    Hi, I’ve set this on a vmware server box and do the initial setup and everything works great.However, when I turn the virtual image off and back on I cannot connect to the ifolder server again. I’m pretty sure that the ip address is the same, it just can’t find server again until I restore the original snapshot. The only thing I haven’t done is – delete the commented line out of /usr/lib/simias/webaccess/iFolders.aspx around line 84
    because I don’t know how to get into the vm image to do this. Is this the culprit of why I can’t get back into the image after shutdown? Any help on this is greatly appreciated…..I’d really like to get this working for the company I work for.

  • http://www.decriptor.com sshaw

    @Jay Weldy, I’m thinking it might be that apache needs to be started. I’d give that a try. The commented line just allows you to log into the /ifolder web interface

  • http://www.jrweldy.net Jay Weldy

    I appreciate the quick response and I’m sure I’m sounding noobish but have never worked in a command line environment.
    How do I go about starting the apache server from command line?
    I assume that it’s after I log in, but am lost after that!
    Thanks again

  • http://www.decriptor.com sshaw

    @Jay Weldy, on the commandline after logging in run,
    chkconfig apache2 on
    - and then -
    rcapache2 start

  • http://www.jrweldy.net Jay Weldy

    Fantastic, thank you very much for the kind help sshaw!

  • http://www.jrweldy.net Jay Weldy

    @sshaw, that did the trick. Woot!

  • http://www.decriptor.com sshaw

    @Jay Weldy, excellent. I’m glad to hear that. The chkconfig command makes it sa that it will start each time you restart the VM.

  • http://www.jrweldy.net Jay Weldy

    yeap, I noticed that. Now all I have to do is figure out how to have it visible to the outside world and I’ll be good. DMZ’d the server but outside clients get error trying to connect to server ip address. Thanks again for your help!

  • http://www.jrweldy.net Jay Weldy

    Just wanted to let all now this is working great for us. Thanks sshaw!

  • http://www.jrweldy.net Jay Weldy

    I’m sorry to be asking another question but is it possible to increase the Default-Store size?
    Mine is starting at 13.6 (?) GB and the mac pro I’m running the vm in has 5 1TB drives in it. I’d like to utilize a full 1TB drive for the vm to run on and use. Again I’m sorry to ask here but haven’t found a better resource of information on the server side.
    Again, Thanks in advance.
    Jay

  • Christian

    Hello, I tested the appliance and it works great.

    I installed iFolder on OpenSuSE directly on the hardware. iFolder is working but the user can not change his/her own password. I remember being able to change the password from the Settings page on the web access (https://server/ifolder)

    Did you modify anything in your appliance to make the password change work?

    Thank you for your help.
    Regards,

    Christian

  • http://www.decriptor.com sshaw

    @Christian With just the built in user authentication it should be on the user page. With ldap I think you have to use whatever your setup uses. I’m not sure why it wouldn’t be working.

  • Christian

    sshaw, thank you for your reply.

    I am not using LDAP so the only way to change the password is thru iFolder server.

    The page at https://server-URL/ifolder/Settings.aspx does not show the password fields but it show them in your appliance. It is strange.

    I installed ifolder3-enterprise-3.7.2.9089.1-0.2.x86_64.rpm, did you use a different version?

    Unfortunately, I am pretty green in Linux, specially in all this Apache stuff.

    Thank you very much for your help.

  • http://www.decriptor.com sshaw

    @Christian I’m hanging out in the Paris airport right now so I’m not able to check, but When I get back into the office I’ll see what I can figure out.

  • Gary

    Question: We currently run Novell iFolder 2.1 on a Netware 6.5 server. We are phasing out our Netware servers. Would this appliance be a good replacement for us?

    Thanks in advance,
    Gary

  • http://www.decriptor.com sshaw

    @Gary If you have a deal with novell I’d recommend going with OES as it will be supported. The nice thing about this appliance is that you can download it and test it out. iFolder 3.8 is around the corner and I’d probably wait for my iFolder appliance that is based on 3.8 before deciding on which direction to go. (Sorry I don’t have an exact date on that, but I believe its soon)

  • Gary

    Thanks for the reply. Since I’ve been selected to find a replacement to Novell’s iFolder and also being a newbie on vmware and linux, I would like to download your 3.7 appliance to test and get familiar with the environment. Unfortunately (since this is all green to me) I’m not sure what to download and how to proceed. We do have some stuff running on vmware but a co-worker set all of that up. I’ll have his assistance if I need it. Can you assist me on how to proceed? Or am I way off base in thinking that your appliance could replace our version of iFolder running on a Netware 6.5 server? Sorry to sound so incompetent. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

    Gary

  • Gerhard

    Hi again!
    After doing a lot of tests I want to change the admin password of the ifolder admin console. Therefor I ran the simias-server-config again, changed the password but it does not work. Checking the /var/simias/data/simias/Simias.config file, the new password is in, but it did not work, still can login using “novell”
    I also do not manage it to change the user password in the settings, error was: “Could not change password, Failed to reset password.”

    I also start from a new image with a new password during the initial setup of the BuildiFolder.sh with the result I cannot login to the ifolder system anymore, neither with novell nor with my own password. This is no problem, revert to snapshot saves that ;-) but I cannot figure out what that passwort issue is caused by. The novell forum suggest to run simias-server-setup. I think, the password “novell” must be “hard coded” somewhere in the appliance.
    Regards
    Gerhard

  • http://www.decriptor.com sshaw

    @Gerhard That’s really odd. I’m not sure what’s going on there, but I know or am not aware of anywhere in the appliance that hard codes that password. I’m going to be redoing the appliance with a newer version of ifolder. Hopefully that helps resolve some of these issues.

  • http://jrweldy.net Jay Weldy

    Hi, I’ve installed the vm appliance and have everything running very well. I appreciate the time sshaw has taken with the image and making it available to us.
    I’m struggling with one thing, the size of the datastore. I’ve increased the size of the vm image hoping that would increase the size of the datastore, however to no avail. I’ve combed the info in the ifolder admin guide but am unable to find anything on increasing the datastore size. Does anyone here know a command to do this that would work in the vm image? As always, any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!
    Jay

  • http://www.decriptor.com sshaw

    @Jay I’m not sure. That’s a good question. I’d recommend jumping into irc and asking in there as there are some guys from the ifolder team that hang out there. They are all in India I believe so I usually ask in the morning.

  • http://jrweldy.net Jay Weldy

    Thanks, I’ll give that a try. Thanks for the reply and again thanks for the vm app.

  • http://jrweldy.net Jay Weldy

    @sshaw: I spoke with a couple people on #ifolder irc last night and they had me run some cmd lines. As explained to me the root partion is only 17 gig with the live file system inside that which is what the default store uses. I can expand the vm image size to any thing I want but then I’d need to expand the root partition to that then expand the live file system inside that partition to gain any default store size. I don’t see a way that I can do that in the vm image. (?)
    Does the build service allow for any thing more as a parameter, or can I just add a usb drive (say 500 GB) and add a default store to that? I’d love to use this vm image since it gives me the security of a nightly snapshot of the file system as backup in case someone deletes a file from their work-station. It’s just that a 16 gb datastore is limiting.

  • http://redmutt.com terpmeister

    Thanks for the great appliance, worked awesome for me in my VM environment. Had it up and going in a couple of hours. BTW, if you want some info on how setup the LDAP stuff, check out this blog: http://goodbadtech.com/2009/06/18/ifolder_opensuse_vmware_2/

    Thanks again.

  • http://www.decriptor.com sshaw

    Thanks. I actually show that article just a couple days ago. I have someone else that gave me an article and was thinking about publishing it as well. I still need to re do the appliance with the newer/ more recently ifolder packages. I’ve been trying to think of a simpler setup for the appliance so that its easier to install, but I think that some of these settings need to be custom configured

  • Gerhard

    @Jay Weldy:
    Hi, I played around with that great appliance (thanks sshaw) and run in the issue with the default store size, too. Imho it makes no sense to play around with the default store, just create a new one. Ifolder does some kind of load balancing and fills the store with more space.
    So, in a VM create a new disk in the size you need, format it, mount it and you can add it as 2nd store
    Here is a short howto for guys like me who are not very well educated in linux.
    Linuxguys, forgive me for my trival howto, everything is so clear when using linux every day;-)
    I suggest to install joe as editor, which uses the old turbo pascal editor commands, I am not happy with vi

    Howto starts here:
    in the linux console:
    create mountpoint (cd /mnt mkdir sdb1 (ie)) (sdb1 is a synonym for the new disk)
    do an fdisk
    mke2fs -j /dev/sdb1
    mount -rw /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1
    change the owner typing chown wwwrun /mnt/sdb1
    change the group with chgrp www /mnt/sdb1

    add the newly created device to /etc/fstab, that means, edit /etc/fstab and add the line:
    /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1 default 0 0
    this is to mount the new disk every time the system starts

    in the admin tool of ifolder, create a new datastore.

    I am not sure whether Ifolder is designed for doing some backup in the way you want, no idea how to restore a single accidently deleted file. Of course you can recreate the whole iFolder from the backup, but if the other users will be happy when they are back in time, I am not sure about.
    If you need this backup feature, there is a software Attix5 which does excatly what you need, but this is definitely not freeware. I think, Ifolder is good for backing up data to protect against hardware loss, but not to keep versions of file or protect single files.

  • http://jrweldy.net jay weldy

    @gerhard:
    Thanks for this write up, I’m very illiterate in linux. For test purposes I created an additional 15 gb drive in the vm setup. I cmd into ifolder appliance and do a format but system says that it doesn’t exist. I use ‘grep sda /proc/partitions’ to check and it’s not showing, even though the appliance shows it connected. I know I’m being a pain in the @*S to everyone here, but could you outline the steps to creating the drive and formatting to the point where you start your howto above? Again I apologize for all the questions and am sincerely grateful for everyones help.

    ( As for the backup plan I’m trying to initiate: I use VM Fusion with automatic snapshots every night. If a user “loses” a file I plan to copy the vm image and snapshot over to another mac pro and start it locally. At that point I can pull the lost file and just upload by the web interface into the users folder for recovery.) The live system remains on line.

  • http://www.decriptor.com sshaw

    @jay don’t worry about it. That’s what we are here for. If we didn’t want to help we wouldn’t reply. Granted I’m not sure that I’ve done much to help out. So, that’s to @Gerhard.

    @jay I think you can use yast and the partitioner to set that up. All you have to do is run yast from the console and then just look through menus for the partitioner.

  • http://jrweldy.net jay weldy

    Hi all and thanks again & again. I used yast and now have an additional volume “dev/sdb1″ that looks(?) like it’s mounting at boot. (Yeah!) I tried going back to the cmd line and doing the ownerships & groups but it says that /dev/sdb1 is not a valid file or folder.
    So, I guess my next question is when I go to add the new datastore, I’m adding it as /var/sdb1
    but it says thats not a valid path.
    Thanks again.
    Jay

  • http://www.decriptor.com sshaw

    @jay you don’t use /dev/sdb1, but what’s called the mount point. When you set it up in yast did you give it a mount point? ie, /var/ifolder/datastore2?

  • http://jrweldy.net jay weldy

    @sshaw, okay…..I went back through and got it set up with your recommendation of yast then went back to gerhards howto and skipped everything before the permissions. Then I went in and added the new datastore as /sdb1 and got an additional 18.8 GB of storage! Which I’d expect for a 20 gig addition.
    I REALLY APPRECIATE everyones help to me in this BIG learning experience.
    I’m sure I’m seriously behind the learning curve with this but would it be of help (to others) if I created a “How-To” combining gerhards how to and your help, and sent it to you in a PDF format?

    Thanks to all,
    Jay

  • http://www.decriptor.com sshaw

    @Jay I imagine that it would be very much appreciated by many. I would take yours and others and try to compile it all down into just a copy howto/help guides. Maybe I should include them on the image as well the next time I build it.

  • http://jrweldy.net jay weldy

    I will start working on it tonight! I’ll email asap when finished.
    Thanks again all.
    J

  • http://www.decriptor.com sshaw

    @jay thanks (sshaw }at{ decriptor }dot{ com)

  • judouk

    I downloaded the xen image of iFolder but am unable to boot from it.
    Is there a website/blog where instructions on how to boot this have been posted?

    [root@me ~]# bunzip2 -c iFolder_XEN_Server.i686-0.0.9.xen.tar.bz2 | tar -xvf -
    iFolder_XEN_Server-0.0.9/
    iFolder_XEN_Server-0.0.9/iFolder_XEN_Server.i686-0.0.9.xenconfig
    iFolder_XEN_Server-0.0.9/iFolder_XEN_Server.i686-0.0.9.raw

    [root@me ~]# cd iFolder_XEN_Server-0.0.9/
    [root@me iFolder_XEN_Server-0.0.9]# xm create -c iFolder_XEN_Server.i686-0.0.9.xenconfig
    Using config file “./iFolder_XEN_Server.i686-0.0.9.xenconfig”.
    Error: No kernel specified
    [root@me iFolder_XEN_Server-0.0.9]# ls
    iFolder_XEN_Server.i686-0.0.9.raw iFolder_XEN_Server.i686-0.0.9.xenconfig

    [root@me iFolder_XEN_Server-0.0.9]# cat iFolder_XEN_Server.i686-0.0.9.xenconfig
    # -*- mode: python; -*-
    name=”iFolder_XEN_Server”
    memory=512
    disk=[ "tap:aio:iFolder_XEN_Server.i686-0.0.9.raw,xvda,w" ]
    vif=[ "bridge=xenbr0" ]

  • Gary

    I finally have a windows xp client connected to my ifolder server. I was getting the “Server too old” message. I re-ran the BuildiFolder.sh routine and noticed that the Public URL is defaulted to https but the How To specifies http, so I was changing it to match the How To. This time I accepted the default and now my client connects. I’m now going to try and setup ldap according to the link in post 34.

  • Mike

    Hi,
    what are the exact commands for starting and stopping the ifolder services, not using the init.d/apache commands? – I would like to schedule the start and stop for these services (as the server itself is automatically started and stopped as a VM). Thanks,
    regards, Mike

  • Stijn Vandamme

    Has anyone been able to get this Vmware image working in Vmware Vsphere (ESXi 4)?

    Vmware convertor doesn’t like the disk format, and refuses to convert it

    regards,
    Stijn

  • Gary

    Hello all,

    I have windows clients setup and working inside our firewall but can’t seem to get a windows client from the outside to connect. I can however get to the iFolder Administration web interface from the outside. I’ve checked with a cisco engineer and everything appears to be setup correctly on the ASA 5510. Does anyone have any ideas as to what I have configured incorrectly?

    Thanks in advance,
    Gary

  • Stijn Vandamme

    Got it to work on ESXi4, i used the 64 it version, that seemed to work

    I also got the earlier mentioned problem, can’t change the admin password.

    And second issue i just noticed, ifolder passphrase is set to my ifolder
    yet i can download the files from the ifolder webpage, without giving my passphrase, and the files are fully readable… So it looks like although the client asks and set’s the passphrase, the files aren’t encrypted at all.

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