ArchivistaBox on the Internet in 5 minutes
Egg, March 1: With the new release 2023/III, it is now possible to make your own ArchivistaBox available on the Internet with just a few clicks. If you wish, you can open SSH access yourself. The latter is helpful for support work, for example. The highlight of the new version 2023/III is that no adjustments to the router are necessary for web access to the ArchivistaBox. This blog is about how this works.
Open source remote software pagekite.net
There are two ways to access a home computer from the Internet. You can either adapt your own firewall (sometimes also integrated in the router) or you can use remote maintenance software that assigns the private address to a public name on the Internet.
The first option requires in-depth knowledge of a firewall or the router and the second solution sometimes incurs steep license fees. Apart from that, these solutions are usually not really transparent, as the software used is not disclosed in the source code (sources). Sometimes the installation is also not really easy and there are not many clients that run with Linux (e.g. for ArchivistaBox or AVMultimedia).
The solution from the Icelandic provider pagekite.net is a laudable exception here. Firstly, the solution consists of a single file (available for Windows, Mac and Linux) and secondly, the source code is open source. As mentioned above, solutions that do not require configuration of the firewall or router require a third party.
This service is offered by pagekite.net at very moderate conditions. The principle is: Pay What You Want. The service can be used free of charge for private use. For commercial use, license fees of currently 36 USD per year apply. If you like, you can also set up your own intermediary server; however, this scenario is not described here for reasons of simplicity.
Setting up an ArchivistaBox with pagekite.net
To make an ArchivistaBox (from version 2024/III) available on the Internet, WebConfig must be called up. The following fields can be found under Administrate services:
To release the ArchivistaBox, the checkbox for Remote maintenance must be activated (see above). A Pagekite instance must be specified for Server for remote access. This can be created via pagekite.net. In the two password fields, enter the value of the ‘secret’ field, which is defined in the account created. The ArchivistaBox is released on the Internet (web access) with Update settings now.
For security reasons, ArchivistaVM is not currently enabled. The ArchivistaBox desktop is also not activated. If you want to grant full access to the ArchivistaBox, you can activate Open SSH access. If you don’t understand SSH, leave the box unchecked.
The ArchivistaBox can now be accessed via the web address specified under Server for remote access (in the example above this would be yourname.pagekite.me). As easy as it is to enable the ArchivistaBox, enabling the ArchivistaBox on the Internet means that all persons who know the passwords for the ArchivistaBox in question can also access it. If no access is required, the checkbox for remote maintenance should therefore be deactivated.
If you explicitly do not want remote maintenance to be possible via WebConfig, you can create the remoteblock file in the /home/archivista/data folder on the ArchivistaBox desktop. The functionality via the WebConfig web interface is then permanently deactivated.
What does the new solution mean for our customers ?
The new solution can be used in support with the ArchivistaBox. It primarily offers a good alternative to commercial providers. As already mentioned in a previous blog, we cannot support every solution in the standard maintenance contract for capacity reasons.
The effort required to set up individualized software for the customer is still possible. However, experience has shown that the effort involved has increased massively in recent years. Therefore, a platinum maintenance contract is now required for individualized customer solutions. Any costs for licenses and the effort required to install the desired remote maintenance will be invoiced. Solutions implemented with SSH are of course excluded from this.
This is why the new solution is not available for AVMultimedia
The solution implemented with the ArchivistaBox requires a web server to be available. This is not the case with AVMultimedia. However, pagekite.py can be used at any time by copying this file to the AVMultimedia desktop, just as it can be used very easily and at any time on all desktop computers (Windows, Mac and Linux). The installation and configuration is well described on the pagekite.net homepage.
