There's a new completely-automated setup procedure for deploying ngrok for use with the MediaServer and LMS-lite skills.
It automatically downloads/configures ngrok and also sets it up to autostart at boot on the target system. Your account-linking UUID is automagically deployed to update the skill(s) when tunnel details change (i.e. upon ngrok restart or system reboot). There's no more manually creating systemd services or tweaking Python/Perl updaters because the installer handles everything :cool:
To make it as easy to use as possible, the user visits a web form (see above) and enters details which are then pre-populated into a downloaded installer script.
Your choice of platform/OS in the form not only determines what version of the ngrok binary to download for you, it also results in a script that matches the native capabilities of the target platform/OS so there are no dependencies to install.
The process is currently available for:
* pCP: with a sh script as installer that builds a tcz package and adds an entry to /opt/bootlocal.sh for autostart.
* Debian-Linuxes: with a bash script as installer for distros like Raspberry Pi OS, Max2Play, Ubuntu - it uses systemd to daemonize ngrok.
* Windows10: with a PowerShell script as installer that runs ngrok as a hidden background process at boot.
The old Python/Perl script for updating tunnel details to the skills has been superseded by a native sh/bash/pwsh script that the installer creates on your system.
The process is fully documented in the new instructions at https://smartskills.tech/lmslitesetup (one installer handles both skills).
When filled out, the form might look as follows:
For noobs evaluating the skills, the recommended platform is probably now Windows 10. There's no need to use ssh to transfer the installer to a headless machine - it's just right-click and run. Remember, ngrok on a PC will happily proxy for a NAS or pi elsewhere in your LAN.
Many thanks to @chill for the pioneering work on the pCP platform script !
p.s. A MacOS version is being worked on...