Slashdot Mirror
Low-Power Home Linux Server?
mpol writes "For years I've been using a home server with Linux, but recently I've been having doubts about the electric bill. I'm not touched by the recession yet, but I would like to cut costs, and going from a 100-Watt system to a 30-Watt system would save me 70 bucks a year. The system doesn't need to do much, just apache, imap, ssh and some nfs, but I do prefer to have a full-fledged system, where I can choose what to install on it. I also don't really care if it's a low-power Via or an ARM processor as long as it's cheap. I'm aiming for $300 or less for a full system, which I could then earn back in about four years through power savings. I've been reading about the Western Digital Mybook World Edition, which has an ARM processor but isn't that easy to install Debian on. A Mac Mini draws about 85 Watts, so that isn't an option either. Something a bit more than turn-key would be fine, but preferably not a complete hack-job. Adding a temporary CR-ROM or DVD-ROM, or a USB disk with an iso to install from would be nice. Any Slashdotters run nice and cheap low-power Linux systems? What can you recommend?"
Get a Sheeva plug its 5W and it looks like an adapter.
http://www.marvell.com/products/embedded_processors/developer/kirkwood/sheevaplug.jsp
I get a whopping 35 Watts used running SETI@home on my Mini... That is with a bus powered FW external HDD for Time Machine hooked up and not spinning down the disks when idle.
A Mac Mini uses nowhere near the power you claim, unless you've got a case where both cores, the GPU, the HDD, and the DVD Burner all all running full tilt at once; a pretty tough thing to do with the use described by the submitter, I'd say.
OSX pwns.
No, the Mini power adapter puts out a max of 110w. Under load, the Mini actually draws a lot less:
http://www.applesource.com.au/mac/soa/Apple-Mac-Mini-2009-/0,2000070803,339295252,00.htm
Just under 30w under load. Might be a bit higher if you have a DVD in there. It draws a lot less juice than the adapter provides.
Absolutely TERRIBLE, no question about it. You'll get much better performance out of the oldest system you can snag off ebay for $20.
Even if you get one for free, I would recomend NOT using it. They made some of the most horrendous design decision ever. First is vastly underpowering the system. Second is giving it anything more than 10BaseT networking, and advertising it as if there's a snowball's chance in hell it'll be able to utilize it... Third, is not providing ANY WAY for the end user to access the underlying system, so when the array gets completely hosed for no reason (and it will! No question.) you can't get in, anywhere, to fix anything, and only a hacked firmware image will save you... Fourth and perhaps most significantly, is cheaping-out on $1 worth of flash, and instead storing the OS image on the HDDs, leaving it vulnerable to data corruption, and a huge pain in the ass to bootstrap with fresh drives (requiring Windows, or at least WINE to run the firmware updater app).
I posted on a forum somewhere about all the typos I found in the firmware of my unit... "ehco" is a good extensive one in the software-raid scripts, ensuring nobody can actually get the reports of a few specific errors, should they occur. And this is in a commercial product.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
It looks like you included the energy for producing the 17" CRT Williams assumes each desktop computer has. I think we could leave that out for a server.