Remember when you first made the choice to do this?

I don't know about you but I was paranoid as all get-out.

Now it hurts my feelings is I have to turn the machine off for something.

Back in the late 80's was the first time I started leaving the computer on. I Sysop'ed a PCBoard BBS on a 386 with 1x 32M RLL hard drive, and 1x 20M MFM hard drive.

When I upgraded to a 486DX2-50 I was in heaven...till the 486DX2-100's came out a week later. <grin>

Now I have 2 computers running full-time on UPS's, and with a solid ground rod drove thru a 1/2" hole in the floor, into the ground below in the crawlspace.

...since my house is 110 yrs. old and if I want a ground I have to make it.

Oh!...some of the house is 3-wire....but not in this room.

If you are paying for the electricity, you might calculate how much that costs over several months or years. Assuming you leave it on 24/7, if you actually use if for 8 hours a day, then you are paying 3 times more than you should for juice.

Over a long period, you may be paying for your computer several times, certainly more than enough to pay for whatever breaks.

That's not necessarily comparing apples to apples. I leave my box on 24 hr.s a day. BUT I shut off the monitor, and with the APM features, the electrical load generated when I'm not using it is probably in the range of a very low wattage light bulb. Far less than when actually using it. Not enought to notice a significant increase on my monthly bill.

Plus, my house would just seem empty without the gentle hum of the cooling fans. Ahhhhhh.......

Since I use Linux on the desktop I leave the computer on 24 * 7, but I have power management set to take affect after 90 minutes of inactivity.

I read in computer shopper that power cycling does much less damage than overheating, so it's better to shut your machine off when you aren't using it. Don't know if that's true but that's what it said!
Don't forget to get a surge control plug socket - pretty obvious I know but I know someone who didn't and woke up one morning to a completely screwed machine - there had been a storm in the night...

im also weary about leaving my pc on 24/7,

are there any special settings i should set before leaving my pc on 24/7?

The one big problem with leaving your pc on all the time is that Crackers have more time to attack your machine.

If you are going to leave your pc on all the time in this Broadband world we live in you need to make sure that you have a very good and well setup firewall.

I'm a RH9 user and am now learning iptables (and looking for a GUI), so I can lock down my pc.

But you must always understand that no matter what firewall you have and no matter how well it is configured, Crackers will always with time get past it.

Now for a question: Is there anything I can run that will let me know if I have been attacked.....some sort of file size/change scan or something???

Cheers

Medic6666

Mostly true. CRTs will typically use between 75 and 125 watts; but actually, a modern processor and a consider amount of RAM can get up into that range as well. LCDs use anywhere from 1/2 to 1/3 of the wattage of CRTs. The video card can also take up a lot of power, and then of course there are the hard drives. With just one 7200 RPM, it's actually not that much power being used, but with a RAID or even JBOD you'll be using more. Interestingly, the new SATA drives even at higher RPM can use less power because they don't have to power those god awful ribbons.

On my box here, a dark screen saver comes on after 5 minutes; and after 20, the power scheme shuts it down.


Medic6666: I'm new to Linux but speaking from a Windows background, almost every firewall can prepare and send you a log of activity, including attempted port scans and the like. At the very least, I know you can review this for suspicious activity. Beyond that, the general rule is to close all your ports and only re-open what you really need.

IMHO its a personal preference. If I use a computer its usually left on for the day. But I turn them off at night. Out of the many my many computers I have had only 1 hard drive has failed and some memory. I won't mention induced failures.

Then again I all of the computer systems at my office that I work with are on 24/7 and none of them have failed either. Turning the computers off on weekends and holidays would save them a considerable amount of money in energy costs.

True, computers in standby mode do not use much power but as previous posts have indicated have you thought about all of your electronics that have some kind of standby mode or run all of the time. If you total it up you would be suprised as to how much it really costs. Then multiple it by the number of households.

Lets see
TV's with remotes
AC powered alarm Clock radios
AC powered clocks
VCR's
Microwaves with clocks
Refridgerators/freezers
Cooking appliances with clocks
Stereo with remote control
Cordless telephones
Water bed heaters
etc. etc.

And most households have more then one. But not to preach about energy conservation.

Anytime you've consumed alcohol turn the thing off, infact hide the power leads - can lead to embarrassing posts in forums when you've been hitting the bottle - or is that just me

if the room is generally dusty, dirty, or smoky, or candle
burningy, turn the computer off as much as you can.

hard drives will last alot longer if you put a fan blowing
across them. i used to never bother, but now that
warranties are 1 year instead of 3, i put a fan in the front
of the case, blowing over the drives, quietly.

it is actually a bad thing to turn your computer on and off....when you turn your computer on the metals expand, and when you shut it off the opposite is true...now put that into consideration when you keep shutting down and booting up....thats going to put some pretty good wear and tear on your hardware....

Reading through threads such as these makes me wish even more for the day that a thermo nuclear device creates enough EMP to make all this debating whether to leave it on or not a moot point.

I just wanna figure out how to install a video player into
Red Hat 8 so I can watch all my porn.mpg!

Is that asking too much?


Thank you for your consideration

well you should of made your own thread rather than ask a question on page 3 of a thread talking about leaving your pc on , anyways go get mplayer or xine, and your problems solved...also to make it easier on the dependancy hell that you will go through with both these players, i'd recommend installing apt-get and type either:
apt-get install mplayer
or.
apt-get install xine
and then that would be it

thats the whole point of this thread. the argument about
turning the computer one and off, and leaving it on.

the theory is that turning it on and off is bad. the reality
is that dirt and too much heat is worse.
i see a lot of computers in farmers worksheds, where it's
100 degrees, and, the inside of the computer is caked with
dirt. those machines can't make it 2 years left on all the
time.
i had a computer i used to use that i turned on and
off no less than 15 times a day for years. many days
it could be 100 times. it lived. thats why i don't worry
at all about turning machines on and off. leaving it
on is ok too, if you have high quality fans. i spend a lot
of time replacing burned up fans in machines that are
dirty. candle burning cakes up those things in no time.
if you smoke a lot, the cdrom will go out fast.
i'll say it again, dirty environment- turn off the machine
as often as possible. clean environment,- do what you
want.

oh my goodness, you ought to see a computer in a
restaurant that gets left on all the time. pizza restaurant,
20 feet from the dough mixer. whoa.