Hardware recommendations for a small server?
 

Hello, I am planning on building a simple Linux box to use as a Web server. To keep it simple and save money and resources, I'd like to make this a headless box, i.e. with no video card, instead consisting of a mother board, memory, hard drive, power supply, and floppy drive. Is it possible to install a typical Linux distro through the serial port from another box? I've heard it is.

Anyway, this box is not going to be hosting any incredibly high bandwidth sites, but I do need something to run a CGI message board (Ikonboard) with some speed. Basically, I need this to handle Apache, Sendmail, MySQL, as well as Perl and PHP scripts. I have a different box on my network running as a firewall. This site would be looking at at most around a few thousand Web requests a day, and a couple hundred Emails.

So what do you guys recommend as hardware for a somewhat low power Web server?

You can install via hyperterminal through a null-modem to the serial port on your server. The motherboard must support booting without a video card though. I dont know of any non-server motherboards that will do that. That is your big obsticle.

Perhaps a used server may fit the bill for you.