Can this be used as a server?

[pritchard9]

Always wanted a server.

Maybe its because I always feel like I'm running out of space (torrents, music etc), or maybe its just to mess about with.

One of my friends gave me an old PC, so I've decided to attempt to turn it into a wee file server. Might make it a little web server later on, if i ever decide to try some ruby on rails programming.

It's specs are pretty poor.

I think I'm going to use Arch Linux, mainly just because I'm using that on my main machine, this laptop, so I'm quite used to it.

Its a 667Mhz Intel Celeron. Hard drives are capped as ATA 66, which sucks, since I have so many ATA133 hard drives kicking about. It's rocking a 10/100 networking port, a "3D Rage Pro" dedicated graphics card (get in there!). It came to me with 128Mb RAM. But I'm buying two 512mb DIMMs from eBay tomorrow. I accidentally broke the 250Watt power supply (loose power cable to a hard drive.. woops), but i replace it with a spare from an old PC (350W.. yus.)

I know I'm not going to get anything blisteringly efficient by the end of it. But aslong as it's bordering between "Usable" and "Darn Efficient", I'll be happy.

So a few question.

Im using an ATA133 Hard Drive in there just now, 120gb. It's working just now, but the chipset only plays nice with ATA66. Is it dangerous using the faster hard drive, or will it just run at the slower speed?

Also, is this even worth it? Or should I give up, chuck it in the loft and buy a cheap barebones bundle and start from there?

Basically, if its worth it, ill buy a wireless N-draft card, and shove it in my warddrobe, using SSH to access it and maintain it.

Any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks,

Pritchardo92

[ArkNinja]

For a file server that should be fine, I have an old IBM ThinkPad laptop running my file server, and it has worse specs than yours does.

[Ryan]

Always wanted a server.

Maybe its because I always feel like I'm running out of space (torrents, music etc), or maybe its just to mess about with.

One of my friends gave me an old PC, so I've decided to attempt to turn it into a wee file server. Might make it a little web server later on, if i ever decide to try some ruby on rails programming.

It's specs are pretty poor.

I think I'm going to use Arch Linux, mainly just because I'm using that on my main machine, this laptop, so I'm quite used to it.

Its a 667Mhz Intel Celeron. Hard drives are capped as ATA 66, which sucks, since I have so many ATA133 hard drives kicking about. It's rocking a 10/100 networking port, a "3D Rage Pro" dedicated graphics card (get in there!). It came to me with 128Mb RAM. But I'm buying two 512mb DIMMs from eBay tomorrow. I accidentally broke the 250Watt power supply (loose power cable to a hard drive.. woops), but i replace it with a spare from an old PC (350W.. yus.)

I know I'm not going to get anything blisteringly efficient by the end of it. But aslong as it's bordering between "Usable" and "Darn Efficient", I'll be happy.

So a few question.

Im using an ATA133 Hard Drive in there just now, 120gb. It's working just now, but the chipset only plays nice with ATA66. Is it dangerous using the faster hard drive, or will it just run at the slower speed?

Also, is this even worth it? Or should I give up, chuck it in the loft and buy a cheap barebones bundle and start from there?

Basically, if its worth it, ill buy a wireless N-draft card, and shove it in my warddrobe, using SSH to access it and maintain it.

Any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks,

Pritchardo92

It should just run at 66 but you can get a pci ide card that should do the job you can just boot from the onboard ide bus and store files on the the pci bus. I think it will work fine as long as you don't try to use it to stream stuff like video. I think the let down there is the ATA66 because i have used older mchines to do the same job

[pritchard9]

Thanks for the replies guys.

@ArkNinja How well does your thinkpad work as a file server? Is it a bit sluggish, or does it work well? Im hoping this set up will work nicely, dont want it to be too slow.

@Ryan Aww nice idea about the PCI card. If I have a spare PCI slot after installing the wireless network card, I'll definately look into that one. Cheers mate :)

[digip]

Im using an ATA133 Hard Drive in there just now, 120gb. It's working just now, but the chipset only plays nice with ATA66. Is it dangerous using the faster hard drive, or will it just run at the slower speed?

Not positive, but might need a bios update for the larger/faster drives to operate at their normal settings ata133 but coudl be limted to the mobo hardware itself. I was never sure how that works, if its both, one or the other. OS drivers for the hdd contorller as well as the IDE cable too.

[ArkNinja]

It works great, it can be a little slow to load up the directories if there are tons of files in them (mine has about 500 movies), which takes about 10-30 seconds, but as soon as it loads its fine for doing anything on it.

[3TeK]

It works great, it can be a little slow to load up the directories if there are tons of files in them (mine has about 500 movies), which takes about 10-30 seconds, but as soon as it loads its fine for doing anything on it.

ouch, i would cry if my file server had those specs...im running a A64 X2 4200+ with 4gb of ram...of course i take it to lan parties and it gets raped..lol, but if its running just @ your house, should be ok i guess...

[ArkNinja]

And its just a file server, so its not like there is any real load on it. HTTP might be a little bit of a problem, but try it out, you never know.

[3TeK]

yea ive got http, ftp, dc++ and some bt files, but i've got too much shit to make a torrent file of everything, lol

its just easiest for people to go to \\tekserver and copy & paste everything all at once..http would be nice but it would take forever to get all my albums at once :-D

[VaKo]

I just replaced a similar system with a new Atom 330 based server. As a small test server, my celeron was fine, might take its time to do anything but it was happy for years.

[pritchard9]

Thank you for all the replies :).

Its nice to hear from people who have done similar projects as this, really good.

Any tips that might make it easier in the long run?

[Webhostbudd]

haha, I'm running a file server on a 233mhz PII with 256mb dram and it runs fine with xubuntu. Good old Dell XPS =p. I'm sure arch will be easy enough for that machine.

[h3%5kr3w]

arch should run smooth as glass on that hardware. Matter of fact, you wanna know pretty close to how it should work without getting your fore-arms dirty, just run sli-taz on it and it should be pretty much on par with it (if the repos were not so limited in that distro I would be running on damn near everything I could get my hands on right about now.)

Btw, on the hdd controller question. Hdd controler revisions between hdd and controler is the same as memory. If the plug fits and the board doesnt support it, the speed just goes down (with the exception of ata33 and +100gig disks). Sounds like your all good there mate. Make's a hell of a linux test box too if needed :D

Also I had a computer I just gave away with close to same spec (actually your's is cumulatively better) and it was doing pretty well with sli taz. Matter of fact, the only reason why it would lag is because it only had 96mb of memory! :X but as long as it could hold it in memory, it was doin' mighty fine :D

Mine was: Intel Celeron 700mhz, intel integrated video, 40gig hdd, and a whopping 20x cdrom.

[pritchard9]

Cheers hex :). Reassurance is nice. Good to know that Im not wasting my time.

Oooh, that sounds a lot like how I got this box. Only 10Gb HD though. And the same spec CD-ROM drive :P.

No idea how they used the 10Gb HD. They used it in a professional environment, in a vets clinic.

Dont think they even wiped the HD.. Might have a look at some of the old account details if curiosity hits me bad.

Win98.. Damn fine :P. I love how the mouse kind of lazily drags itself around the screen. Quality :P.

Wireless card should come in the post any day now. Was hoping today but meh.

Edimax EW7728In PCI incase your interested. Ive read that it runs natively since a few kernel updates ago, which should be nice. :D.

After that comes, it *should* just be a case of tinkering with wpasupplicant and changing SSH permissions. Maybe grab an ftp daemon from repositories, and find a nice ftp client for the laptop :). Or I'll learn some command line magic to do it instead :P