comment on

I've been having a bit of fun putting together a new home server, and have some info for others who might be pondering building their next PC, but who are on a budget. This is kind of off-topic, except that we all need hardware to run Perl on, and many of us are on tight budgets right now.

I do most of my work on a laptop, using a server for mod_perl/Samba/CVS/etc. My old P133-based server was getting unstable (I suspect that the disk controller was dying), and I was looking around for what to replace it with. None of the refurb boxes I found inspired great confidence, new equipment seemed rather expensive, and I wanted something small. The Shuttle boxes looked tempting, but were still expensive. My needs didn't require 1.8Ghz+ speed.

Researching further, I found that an emerging alternative to Intel- or AMD-based motherboards are the all-in-one Via Mini-ITX boards, many of which run the low-power, i586-compatible Via C3 chip. The Mini-ITX boards have Audio, Video, and LAN on-board. Some have TV-Out. You basically plug in RAM, hook up a disk and CD/DVD, install an OS, and away you go. Oh, and you need a case. That's where some people have been having a lot of fun, building Mini-ITX boards into lunch boxes, toaster ovens, old game consoles, cigar humidors, etc. The low-end processor can be run fanless, for truly quiet computing.

I was skeptical of the stability of these boards until I did some research, and found that they could run RH8 and recent builds of FreeBSD (and gentoo linux, with a bit of futzing), and that people who had them were pretty happy with them.. A positive report from a serious FreeBSD developer I respect was enough to push me over the edge.

I opted for this board in this case (which is quiet, but not silent), adding a 256Mb RAM stick and a Sony CDRW (on sale), and reused a 60GB IBM drive from the old server. (The board actually booted off of the old drive, which had RH7.2, but I installed RH8 to get newer drivers.) In total, I shelled out about $350 USD, including taxes.

I'm happy with the result, with a few caveats:

The C3 processor is i586 compatible, but lacks a few instructions in the i686 set. This means compiling some stuff from source. I haven't had any trouble with anything from a fresh RH8 install, which claims to be built for i686, but I'm probably just lucky (so far).
The on-board AGP graphics is pretty much limited to 1024x768x24 graphics. It's fine for text or X, but don't expect to play graphics-intensive games. I run the box mostly headless, so I don't care.
TV-Out may require drivers that aren't yet stable on Linux. Again, no issue if you're just running headless or don't plan on plugging the box into a TV.

The linITX forum has more reports from people who're running Linux on Mini-ITX boards.

Disclaimers: None. I'm just a happy customer.

In reply to OT: Building a small home server by dws

Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:
<code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>
Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.


Do you know where your variables are?
	PerlMonks