Re: [vox-tech] My Thought: Building a Server

[Samuel Merritt <spam@andcheeMAPSse.org>]

On Thu, Jan 30, 2003 at 09:30:59PM -0800, Richard Crawford wrote:
> My wife and I have been planning on getting a server of our own for quite
> awhile now.  And while browsing through Fry's recently, I stumbled across
> a book on building your own PC.
> 
> Here's what we want to build: a nice little server running off a DSL line;
> it'd host a couple of printers, our documents, all of our MP3's, mail, and
> a relatively low-traffic website.  I imagine this will be relatively low
> maintenance so I don't want to worry about co-locating.  

I've got almost the same setup: a little machine that hosts a dozen or
so low-traffic websites, runs Samba* for local file and printer sharing,
and mail for my domain. It's a Debian system with a current uptime of
160 days, and that's only because of power problems this summer. 

Keep in mind that you don't need a powerful system; I've got a dual
Pentium Pro 200 handling all the above tasks plus netatalk, playing
mp3+ogg files, and squid, and my load average usually hovers around
0.15, and very seldom gets above 1.5. 

* I'd rather use Coda or NFS or something, but my roommates are all
Windows users. 


> I've been pondering RAID as well.  

You won't need it for performance; the network will be the bottleneck
for file sharing. The redundancy might help if you're not confident in
the quality of your drives. 

> And, naturally, it will be running Linux (I'm
> familiar with Red Hat, but I'm certainly open to suggestions for other
> systems).  

Anecdote: my Debian (stable) system has been virtually maintenance-free
for more than a year now. The installation was kind of a pain, but I did
that in late 2000.

> My rationale is that anything I build for myself using parts
> that I've carefully researched to make sure they're all willing to play
> with each other and with Linux is probably going to be more stable than
> anything I buy from Dell or Gateway or Wal-Mart.
> 
> I don't know.  Does this sound like a stupid idea or what?

Sounds like a good idea to me. If nothing else, you'll learn a lot. 

> -- 
> Slainte,
> Richard S. Crawford
> AIM: Buffalo2K / Y!: rscrawford / ICQ: 11640404
> http://www.mossroot.com http://www.stonegoose.com
> "It is only with our heart that we can see clearly.  What is essential is
> invisible to the eye."  --Antoine de Saint Exupery

-- 
Samuel Merritt
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