Building A Server
 

Okay folks here is your moment to shine and tell me all about great hardware for Linux. I want to build a new server from the ground up. I will be running Apache, CUPS, SSH, MySQL, and maybe Samba and Mail. My site is not a "high traffic" site because its just my little homepage.

I'm looking to put together something that is cheap, efficient, and powerfull. What kind of parts should I get? Are there any good pages out there now that have good systems pre-built for Linux?

Are you looking for every component of a system? It really depends on your traffic, I have a P-II that runs everything your running plus alittle more, less SQL(its my router,does NAT,and firewall too). AMD processors rock...fully compatible...are you looking for a distribution? I like clarkconnect for simplicity. Very easy setup, install, maintain... Also, it only has 10GB, not that much is necessary for a personal server(generally).at least 128MB ram...gigabit is nice...(jok'n)...if you find hardware and you want to know if its compatible...check out :http://www.linuxcompatible.org/

Nice link. Thanks.

Are you planning to buy new parts and stuff? For a home server?

Man sometimes I wish I could do that...but my other rl linux friend and I were discussing this lately and it was an interesting conversation (background info: He only has 2 PCs at home...a p133 with 96 megs of RAM and a 233 with 96 Megs of RAM)

He was saying that he would LOVE to see/use Linux on a brand spanking new machine and that it frustrated him because whenever he'd tell his other friends about linux, they were less than impressed because it was always a distro running on older machines.

I agree with him...there's not much "wow" factor in seeing linux work on a p133 or a p166 for the layman...but for me (and this is getting back to my point..sorry for the digression) its so amazing that linux works and works WELL on old machines.

My gateway server at home is a 166 with 64 Megs of ram...and my samba server (for docs and MP3s mostly) is a p133 with 94 megs of RAM and they work really damn good. Uptime is now 167 days (would have been longer but I have a power outtage).

I end up getting a lot of older PCs (166s, 233s) for free...so I usually set em up with a linux distro and add 'em to the network.

Ummmm...Why don't you ship me one of those "free" PCs? LOL Well I know how well Linux works on older machines and thats why I'm not going to go crazy with it and buy a brand new 2.0 GHz machine with 512mb of ram and all that other stuff. I'm thinking about getting a machine off e-bay or buying one of those "bare-bones" machines from a place like tigerdirect.com. I've heard horror stories about these bare-bones machines so I might just go with e-bay instead unless I can find someone who is nice enough to send me a free machine.*-wink-* *-wink-*

Well if I sent you one, it wouldn't be free anymore would it? hehehe. As it is, the only machines I have right now that aren't in use are my dad's old P233 (he just got an old P350 from his office and I moved everything over to it, so he gave me his old one) which I am planning to turn into my new server, and I have 2 486s that I'm planning to gut and combine into one big 486 to use as a barebones MP3 player in the living room.

But you don't need me to send you one...look around, that's how I found mine...companies are always throwing out old PCs...its amazing sometimes (my friend found a P400, no HD that was being junked...so he took it home, slapped a HD in there and he was all set!).