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Energy Efficient and Cheap Servers for Home Use?
CapnRob asks: "I just got married, and my wife and I are putting together a home network in the (small) apartment we're now living in. We'd like to set up a firewall/mail server/small-file-server, but all the machines we own right now are pretty big machines that pull a fair amount of power, and that we don't want to keep running 24/7. Since our mail and file server needs are pretty low, our ideal box would be something like a Linksys WRT45G with one of the open source firmwares ... if only you could add a small hard drive to it. We're both long-time FreeBSD users, so installing a *nix system is no big deal, but what I've found so far in this line needs more l337 soldering iron skillz than I've got. Any suggestions for tiny little cheap boxes that won't send our power bills into orbit?"
I'm using an old Pentium 166Mhz for my network server and find that it works great. In fact, it's probably overkill. I've got 128mb ram, some old small (~10GB disks), and a couple of network cards. The machine is running an internal dhcp server, a samba server, an lpd server, and a firewall under RH 7.3. The power consumption is quite low - I think the power supply is 200W.
geez.. it's so obvious how some slashdot articles from people claiming to be innocent and naive are actually from vultures attempting to use the /. for what it's worth.. its about time /. started requiring a background check.. :)