Notebooks and Mini ITX Machines as Home Servers?

An anonymous reader asks: "I recently moved into a townhouse (the first time on my own, actually) and need to get a server up and running before the other trivial stuff (furniture, getting food in the fridge, *getting* a fridge, etc, etc). I need the basic set of services - HTTP, FTP, DNS, SMTP/POP3 for any self respecting geek. The drawback is that I'm on a limited budget (money and space wise) and need a server that is *extremely* energy efficient, takes up little space, makes no noise, and generates very little heat. A basic P4 notebook seems to fit the bill - small, low power consumption, built in screen/keyboard/mouse (no need for KVM), wireless so I can stick it on the top shelf of my closet, and generates less heat and noise than your average desktop. Is there any reason to consider, say, a mini ITX rig (such as a shuttle) over this? Any drawbacks?"

Comments

Best of both worlds

[Hardwyred]

What I have done is purchase a socket 370 Via C3 online (they go for like 30 bucks for a 900Mhz that uses very little power) and then just used an old socket 370 mini atx case (ya know, the one with 2 PCI slots and EVERYTHING else built onboard). No harddrives in it, I run everything off of CD and use Ramdisks for RW stuff. It's a little noisy when it first boots up but after 45 seconds or so, it's as quiet as a powersupply fan and a CPU fan can be. Cheap too, I think I have a total of 60 bucks invested (god love ebay). So in short, be a geek and build your own. The power difference over a year between the eden boards and a C3 you can buy will amount to a super sized extra value meal over a year.

Re:Laptops work, but be careful

[LordNimon]

If you disable all logging, a properly configured laptop with enough memory should almost never go to disk. The laptop will then power down the hard drive. Some exceptions would be if you had a POP3 and/or SMTP server.

Hmmm... that would be a useful FAQ: How to configure a Linux server to minimize/eliminate disk I/0.