Hi all,

What are the minimum system requirements needed on a given system for Slackware to run with apache and mysql?

I have a couple of ancient machines (stone age ancient!) which I want to turn to servers in the basement.

Help would be appreciated.

Slackware itself can be configured to run on just about the barest of systems.

You can rule anything before a i386 since Linux won't run on that at all except as an academic exercise. An i486 would be about the minimum you'd want to use. You should be able to configure a server in 200~300MB with 16~32MB RAM.

Of course, without knowing what software and what load you're planning to put on the servers, it's hard to make a recommendation. Can you provide some details?

Dennisk

I will use the machines to upload files to them, arrange the files, and make them available for download. A file dump basically. I will not be running anything else, except for what it is required to accomplish that task.

If you can actually tell me, in very broad lines, what softwares and what versions will suit the job, I'll be grateful!

Edit:

Example of the hardware on one of the machines:

Amd K6 166
48 M Ram
1.4 FDD
6 Gigs hard drive
SB 16

That's sort of a vague description of what you plan to do...but depending upon who will upload the files; how you intend to arrange them; who will download them, etc., there are a lot of options and some of them are pretty basic and don't require much in the way of machine resources.

For example: I have a web server behind a NAT firewall, and the only real purpose of this web server is for our customers to view and/or download documentation for a specialized product we build for railroads and to watch a few short videos to lead the less technically inclined through the setup procedure.

I'm the only one who "uploads" anything to the web server, and because our LAN is well firewalled and because we're a small family owned business, we're not too concerned that we will engage in malicious hacking of our own server.

So I just use NFS...I mount an exported directory on the web server from my workstation, copy the file to the web server, unmount the directory, ssh into the server and copy the file(s) into whatever subdirectory of htdocs they need to go into.

Obviously, that's not going to work for a lot of situations that could fall under the description you provided, but it works fine in mine.

As to machine specs, if your pipe isn't larger than a T1, even a 486DX running Slackware can do a pretty good job of plugging it with static html, html downloads, and some video.

ON EDIT:

As to software and versions, if you simply install Slackware 12, disksets "A" and "N" (and nothing else), you'll be "good to go," on a solution similar to mine. You'll have the base system, plus ssh, Apache and nfsd, etc., and the additional (unused) packages won't take up much space even if you select the "install everything" option, if you select nothing other than disksets "A" and "N" during the install.

Thank you bughead1, I really appreciate your help. And sorry for being vague. My usage of these machines will be very similar to yours. I will be the only one uploading files to them, but they will be open to the public to download from. I plan to have some static html pages as well.

My thanks goes to dennisk as well for the prompt response.

Be aware that your ISP or cable provider maybe block certain ports. They usually want you to have a business account if you're running a server.

Dennisk