[conspire] which box for: low end, low noise, low, profile?
Edmund J. Biow
biow at sbcglobal.net
Sat Aug 4 16:04:01 PDT 2007
> Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2007 16:30:20 -0700
> From: Eric De Mund <ead-conspire at ixian.com>
> Subject: [conspire] which box for: low end, low noise, low profile?
> To: conspire at linuxmafia.com
> Message-ID: <18099.47756.270824.942752 at bear.he.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> All,
>
> Rather than sign up with one of these online storage sites so as to be
> able to back up my files and be able to share (via http or anonymous
> ftp) the occasional large file (under 100 MB) with off-site friends/
> colleagues/clients, I'm contemplating setting up a very small, very low
> end linux box.
>
Yesterday my cousin's kid set up a 50 GB slice of his 500 GB personal
domain on an outfit called dreamhost.net, I believe he pays $9 a month,
and they let you sub-divide it. I have a ssh login, web, pop & IMAP
mail, web hosting, sftp transfers, pretty sweet, though I haven't played
around with it much, except to change the passwords and put up an
index.html page. Get something like that and divide up the cost between
a few friends and it will be way cheaper than just the electricity on
running even a low power server. FWIW, the site runs a Sarge server
with a custom kernel
(2.4.29-grsec+w+fhs6b+gr0501+nfs+a32+++p4+sata+c4+gr2b-v6.189) on a
Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 2.80GHz.
> What kind of very small footprint, low profile, low noise, low end box
> (case, motherboard, and CPU) do you all recommend? I'd be perfectly
> happy with 200 MHz processor with passive cooling (in fact I'd prefer
> passive cooling), a 40 GB hard disk drive, and a 3 cm. tall case.
>
My cheapo solution is an Asus Terminator for about $95 delivered:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856110056
Slap in an old stick of DDR that you have lying around and a drive, blow
on your distro of choice, and you are ready to go. I ran Sarge on mine
for over 2 years and it didn't give me any trouble, when I upgraded to
Etch Stable in April I developed a number of issues (freeze ups with no
logs I could find, unusable sound, some other stuff), but last month I
bit the bullet and upgraded again to Testing/Lenny, and it has been MUCH
better. Sound is good again, but I still had one freeze up; maybe the
165 watt PSU is beginning to show signs of wear and tear after (very
slowly) churning out SETI units and running 2 hard drives and a DVD
burner 24/7. I tried to install CentOS 5 on a spare partition, but like
Don Marti mentioned below, the CPU doesn't support i686 instructions, so
I couldn't. I had to choose the Debian 486 kernel.
It isn't silent, unfortunately. I suppose if I put a decent after-market
fan on it I could quiet the Via C3 Samuel 800 MHz CPU down. Maybe a
good heat sink and underclocking might enable me to skip the CPU fan
altogether even though the case is small and cluttered and not well
ventilated. I believe my little guy chokes down about 11.3 watts TDP:
http://www.mini-itx.com/faq.asp#Hardware7 And you'd still have to live
with the PSU fan and drives. Oh, and the processor is actually slower
at the Business Winstone benchmark than a 500 MHz P-III:
http://www.dansdata.com/c3.htm
It is pretty small (7.1" x 10.8" x 11.8"), but not as tiny as you'd
want, maybe.
> I haven't decided if I'd like this box to have a CD/DVD burner,
>
For the first couple of years I just used the CD-ROM drive that came
with this unit, but on Black Friday last November I picked up a brand
name DVD-burner for $30, no MIR, at Best Buy. When the server used to
live in my "orifice" in my apartment on the second floor I used it
regularly and never had a bad burn, but I moved the thing up to the
attic in April and don't think I've used the burner since, though I
still use the box for desktop stuff.
> too.
>
> Many thanks,
> Eric
> --
> "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that
> we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic
> and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
> --Theodore Roosevelt (editorial in the Kansas City Star, May 7, 1918)
>
> Eric De Mund | Ixian Systems |
> email: <ead at ixian.com> | 650 Castro St, #120-210 | ICQ: 811788
> http://www.ixian.com/ead/ | Mountain View, CA 94041 | Y!M: ead0002
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2007 16:49:21 -0700
> From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
> Subject: Re: [conspire] which box for: low end, low noise, low
> profile?
> To: Eric De Mund <ead-conspire at ixian.com>
> Cc: conspire at linuxmafia.com
> Message-ID: <20070803234921.GJ19464 at linuxmafia.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> Maybe your best bet is an old laptop. It might not be 100% passive
> cooling, but it would probably be quiet.
>
That is a good idea, but I have 750 GB of storage on my server, so I'd
have to hang a big USB external hard drive on it. From a 'df':
//term/term 401G 315G 86G 79% /home/term
//term/www 20G 13G 6.5G 67% /home/www
//term/hdb 230G 199G 31G 87% /home/muse
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2007 18:09:58 -0700
> From: Don Marti <dmarti at zgp.org>
> Subject: Re: [conspire] which box for: low end, low noise, low
> profile?
> To: conspire at linuxmafia.com
> Message-ID: <20070804010958.GA23565 at zgp.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
>
> begin Rick Moen quotation of Fri, Aug 03, 2007 at 04:49:21PM -0700:
>
>> Quoting Eric De Mund (ead-conspire at ixian.com):
>>
>>
>>> What kind of very small footprint, low profile, low noise, low end box
>>> (case, motherboard, and CPU) do you all recommend? I'd be perfectly
>>> happy with 200 MHz processor with passive cooling (in fact I'd prefer
>>> passive cooling), a 40 GB hard disk drive, and a 3 cm. tall case.
>>>
>> The last (x86-class) CPU I know that really, truly ran cool and allowed
>> you -- with care -- to get by with nothing but passive cooling in your
>> system was the AMD K6 -- which would be perfectly adequate for the sort
>> of system you're talking about. With the right mini-ATX motherboard and
>> suitable case with adequate airflow, you could probably swing that sort
>> of operation. But _3 cm_? I can't imagine how you could honestly get
>> any sort of airflow at all, let alone adequate airflow, with a 3 cm tall
>> case.
>>
Apparently there are 2.5-3" Mini-ITX cases out there, but 3 cm is tiny,
a bit over an inch.
>
> You could get a Via Mini-ITX board.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini-ITX
>
> Some have no CPU fan. I use one running software RAID
> for my home backup server. Be sure to use a kernel
> built for 586 or below, since the Via processors
> don't have the full 686 instruction set.
>
My only problem with most Mini-ITX solutions is that once you pay for
the case and the board/CPU/fan, they are not superdupercheap.
http://www.google.com/products?q=Mini-ITX
You can get this 533 MHz fanless CPU/mobo combo with a sleek little case
for about $239 delivered:
http://logicalplus.stores.yahoo.net/viaepappl53f.html
http://logicalplus.stores.yahoo.net/viases2midec.html
Then you still need RAM and a drive.
If you don't have an old laptop and can wait until September or so Asus
is announcing a very compact $200 Linux laptop.
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS9292516116.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASUS_Eee_PC
It is very small: 8.6 x 6.5 x 1.3 inches (225 x 165 x 21-35mm)
It weighs about a KG (2 lbs) and has a 7" display.
It comes with 512 MB of DDR2 and the low-end units have a 4 GB flash
memory hard drive.
It has wireless, ethernet, a modem, a built in camera and
It is supposed to come with a 900 MHz Pentium M and have a 3 hour
battery life.
It will apparently come with a version of Debian-based Xandros and will
probably have KDE. Xandros 4.1 is still based on Sarge.
Anyway, plug in a cheap "portable" (I guess 2.5") hard drive, add a few
applications, and you should be locked and loaded.
http://www.netaffilia.com/ad/electronics/frys/i/2007/08/03/26028.html
> Another option for a low-power Linux box is the
> Linksys NSLU2 "slug" -- an ARM-based appliance that
> you can hook up a USB drive to and run Debian on.
> http://www.cyrius.com/debian/nslu2/
>
That also sounds like a great option. Apparently you can get one of
these for under $100.
- Ed Biow
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