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Intermittent usage on Fedora Linux
http://www.neorouter.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5457
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Author:  MacDaddy [ Sun Mar 09, 2014 10:21 pm ]
Post subject:  Intermittent usage on Fedora Linux

Hello - I found your product while researching ways to remote connect to Vortexbox. I am part of a group of music geeks and have become the designated "support". It is my intention to use your product to allow me to help my remote friends with configuring, maintaining and updating their music jukeboxes. I want to ask for some confirmation before starting the journey.

Environment: 6 dedicated Fedora Linux boxes running Vortexbox (old SqueezeServer) in headless mode. All are internet attached and have dynamic addresses. There are a wide variety of ISP and routers involved. All boxes are running behind routers.

It would be my intent to host the server NR instance on my own box and provide client NR for each of my friends box (while it might be possible to give each friend their own host, I imagine that is not the usage you intended). I intend to log in once with my own credentials from each of their boxes, but not to give each person their own login. There will be times when one or more of the Vortexboxes will go offline for unpredictable periods of time (including mine hosting the server).

My questions:
1) Is this design the best practice for a casual/intermittent use case?
2) Will the NR client maintain the outside IP address if the ISP provides a different IP address on lease expiration?
3) Will the absence of the NR server instance have adverse impact on the clients?
4) Is it better to give all my friends their own logins or just log their boxes in with my own credentials and uncheck password box? (intent is to run headless and most of them aren't the most computer literate).
5) If I have my NR server instance offline for a period of time, how long does it take for the NR clients to "discover" it's back online?

Thanks in advance for any advice and comments you might be able to offer.

Author:  kevinz [ Mon Mar 10, 2014 8:42 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Intermittent usage on Fedora Linux

Hi MacDaddy,

Thanks for your post.

Please take a look the comments below:

Quote:
1) Is this design the best practice for a casual/intermittent use case?

It's a common usage and NeoRouter solution will meet your requirements for sure.


Quote:
2) Will the NR client maintain the outside IP address if the ISP provides a different IP address on lease expiration?

Yes. Whenever NR client can reach the NR server, it will be fine. No matter public IP gets changed or NR client moved to a new place, NR client will handle it.


Quote:
3) Will the absence of the NR server instance have adverse impact on the clients?

Yes. Once NR server goes down, all NR clients will be disconnected from the server and keep retrying connect. At the moment your NR network is not usable.


Quote:
4) Is it better to give all my friends their own logins or just log their boxes in with my own credentials and uncheck password box? (intent is to run headless and most of them aren't the most computer literate).

It depends. In your case, it's ok to share one credentials, as you just want to remotely control those machines. Once you sign in to NR server successfully, the machine gets registered and it will be connected automatically.If you use NR Pro and want to control the music stream service, you may want to consider about using different NR accounts .



5) If I have my NR server instance offline for a period of time, how long does it take for the NR clients to "discover" it's back online?

It depends. If your server goes offline, NR clients will be offline immediately. When your server goes online ( without public IP changes), NR clients will discover it and back online in a minute.


Thanks,
KevinZ - NeoRouter team

Author:  MacDaddy [ Mon Mar 10, 2014 12:03 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Intermittent usage on Fedora Linux

Thanks so much for your helpful responses. And as no good deed goes unpunished, so too does no good answer go without further questions:-)

I really don't want to be in the full time server hosting business. For the money to make my own lowest cost dedicated server, it looks like I could get a little over of a year hosting on your mesh product (if I understand it correctly). I think my plan of attack is going to be to first set up the NR server on my own machine and NR client (my credentials) on his machine and exercise it for a little while to make sure it works as expected and gain a little understanding. Then I would like to convert my NR server to a NR client, promote my domain to the mesh product, and set up NR client on my remaining buddies boxes.

My questions:
1) Can the normal NR clients connected to a standalone NR server be redirected easily to Mesh server?
2) If I sign up for a domain for my own standalone NR server, can that be moved to the Mesh server? If not, can I "decommission" my standalone domain?
3) Can I still use my credentials to establish each of my buddies NR client connections without having to create unique for each one?

Thanks again for your time and consideration.

Author:  kevinz [ Mon Mar 10, 2014 6:18 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Intermittent usage on Fedora Linux

Hi MacDaddy,

See the comments below (assume you mean the NR Mesh):

Quote:
1) Can the normal NR clients connected to a standalone NR server be redirected easily to Mesh server?

NR Pro/Mesh clients are compatible each other and both of them can access NR Pro/Mesh server, while NR Free client cannot access Mesh/Pro server.


Quote:
2) If I sign up for a domain for my own standalone NR server, can that be moved to the Mesh server? If not, can I "decommission" my standalone domain?

No. They are different kinds of domains. You can delete the domain when you don't need.


Quote:
3) Can I still use my credentials to establish each of my buddies NR client connections without having to create unique for each one?

Yes.


Btw, if you plan to use Mesh/Pro server later, you can install the NR Mesh/Pro client on your machines while testing a NR Free server. Hence when you move to Mesh/Pro server, you don't have to re-install NR clients on all machines.

Thanks,
KevinZ - NeoRouter team

Author:  MacDaddy [ Mon Mar 10, 2014 9:47 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Intermittent usage on Fedora Linux

Thanks once again for your information. I had some time to experiment a little tonight. I used the Wiki instructions for a server install on Fedora from command line. Some of my experiences might be unique to the Vortexbox approach to using Fedora 20, but I thought I would share here in case another person follows along after me.

1) Create domain - piece of cake.
2) Install NR server on Linux box - the 32-bit version was retrieved with wget and installed with yum. The attempts to register it as a service failed. I'll need to use systemctl to set up as a service later, but for now I could start it from the console for my tests. The RSA key generated successfully though.
3) Firewall config - the instructions for forwarding port 32976 were out of sync for Linux distros running iptables/netfilter (seems to me). However, for the default Vortexbox install there is no firewall active (it relies on your router). It might be helpful to make this distinction in the Wiki if your NR server instance runs on a box behind a router for future users.
4) NR Server configuration - I installed the NR client on a Windows desktop on the same LAN as the NR server box and started the Configuration Explorer. Logged in directly to the NR server with IP. I was able to configure the Domain. I went to the dashboard and logged in my Domain. My NR server instance was not reached. It seemed from the Wiki that the Configuration explorer would use uPNP to activate port forwarding (I use Tomato on RT-16, which should honor uPNP - or at least did so with Spotify). No entries were in uPNP list when reviewing in router, so I added a manual port forwarding for 32976. The NR server instance then showed up in dashboard!
5) WAN side access - I don't have a buddy to test with me, but I used the NR Web Access to exercise the connection. It was able to successfully see the Windows NR client.

At first blush, it seems that this will be able to work for the application desired. I plan to get a package together and rope one of my buddies into being the guinea pig this weekend. Thanks once again for your help and answers.

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