discuss: HOWTO about small&silent servers
Subject:
Re: HOWTO about small&silent servers
From:
Christian Schnobrich ####@####.####
Date:
6 May 2004 22:51:20 -0000
Message-Id: <1083883924.844.187.camel@pferd.babel>
On Thu, 2004-05-06 at 18:03, Emma Jane Hogbin wrote:
> On Wed, May 05, 2004 at 03:58:36PM +0200, Christian Schnobrich wrote:
> > recently I exchanged a few mails with someone who used an Athlon 1800
> >
> http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Athlon-Powersaving-HOWTO/index.html
> I think we already have the start of this document in our collection.
> Perhaps you'd be interested in contributing notes there?
Not at all -- wrong topic. The point is that for most services and the
little number of users involved, a 486 could do it with one hand tied to
it's back. The fact that someone threw an Athlon at the task was what
gave me the idea that an HOWTO might be in order.
Here's what might become the introduction of my Document. However,
English is not my native language and while I could come up with a
fairly decent english version, I already noticed that a truly good
translation is beyond my capacity.
-snip-
You have a broadband internet connection you want to share with your
family or flat-sharing community. Either you want more than current
black-box routers can offer. Or maybe you have old hardware left in the
cupboard, that could be put to good use as an internet gateway (a
so-called "router") and save you the money for a black-box router -- and
once there is an actual computer running 24/7, there is a temptation to
add more services. Unfortunately, most people do not have a dedicated
server room where the beast can happily hum away.
This HOWTO shall provide a rundown of suitable hardware and some guides
and tips on keeping the machine quiet.
The contents of this document may to some degree be applicable to
"living-room machines" like mp3-boxes and perhaps even self-made digital
VCRs. It will be of little use to people who want to silence a current
workstation.
-snap-
The hardware rundown mostly deals with issues like 486's slow IDE
interface, RAM limitations on many Pentium boards, points out that you
may run into trouble if you want to connect a large disk to an old board
and such stuff.
Plus some information (both gathered data and rules of thumb) about
power consumption, as any power turns into heat you need to get rid of.
The "keep it quiet" part consists mostly of my experiences with fanless
operation, noise insulation and so on. I had some phenomenal false
starts with sophisticated approaches, and in the end found out that you
can have decent results with little effort.
I do not yet have a section on services and their hardware requirements.
All services I'm running myself and most I can think of are easily
satisfied -- but there may be exceptions. What about squid, privoxy or
spamassassin?
cu,
Schnobs
