[rescue] FW: WTT: 1.5G of PC2700 for 1G of PC100

[Joshua Boyd]

On Mon, May 05, 2008 at 03:33:17PM -0400, William Enestvedt wrote:
> Dang, Josh, five years? I guess it's too late to send a set of
> candlesticks...
> 
>    A funny thng about "home servers" is that we want server-grade gear
> but as quiet as a home office PC -- or at least my wife does, :7)

My wife has given up on the silent.  At this point I'm bothered by it
more than she is.  I love her so much.

If you will allow a amusing (at least to me) story about her, here is
one.  For the first 4.5 years, we lived in small apartments.  Somewhere
in the first two months of marriage (we moved about 2.5 months in), I
aquired both a machine rack and an Octane(that was actually a wedding
gift.  The other geeky wedding gift was a TI89).  From that point until
we moved again in October, she has lived with both in her living room.
And then at some point, I added an E250 as well (that box may have been
a bit of a mistake).  In the second apartment, there was no place you
could go and not hear the machines. 

So, when we moved, the rack and most of the machines went into the
basement.  Our bedroom and office are on the second floor.  For about
the first week she complained that she couldn't sleep because it was
too quiet.  When I got a Fuel (a very nice trade) and put it in the
office next to the bedroom, she commented that she appreciated the noise
(but it is off when not in use because I don't actually appreciate the
noise). 

When we have people over, she will proudly point out the machines, and
other women would fairly often tell her that they could never put up
with such things.

Did I mention I really love my wife?  And its not like I married a
computer person either.
 
>    There's a few V100s or Ultra 10s around here, but I'm reluctant to
> even scrounge one of those b/c she would ask why I was running something
> 24/7...And she's be right. Perhaps I will try an Ultra 10 and just boot
> it up manually when I want data off it, and pray that it never died in
> its sleep. :7) Or *forehead slap* maybe this PC would be fine with a BSD
> on it if I only ran it when I needed it -- and in that case, I may even
> find a use for the old Happauge TV card!

If you can stand the boot times, that is probably best.
 
>    I so seldom read posts on this list about turning off machines when
> idle (vice that "The Terror of Machine Room Silence" thread I enjoy so
> much last week) that I never think of it myself.

I've been leaving machines off more.  There are 5 machines I refuse
to leave off though.  My desktop Mac, my file server, my router, my
network services machine, and my... lets call it a DMZ.  I don't have a
static IP, so there are no public internet services running from home.
I'm not the only one who can access my home network remotely though.

I would be happy to let the Mac sleep, except that sleep doesn't work
correctly (I think it is the SATA card that is the problem), and if it
did sleep, I don't know how to do wake on lan.

I could let the file server off when I'm not home, but it takes forever
to boot.  If it had a working sleep function, I'd be happy to have it
asleep when I'm not home.  And I suppose if I was smart, I could turn it
off in the morning, then turn it on via the rsc over the internet before
I leave work to go home.  BTW, I try to work off the file server a lot,
rather than just copy stuff to it from the desktop periodically.

I do contemplate someday replacing the firewall (currently a Netra T1)
and the network services box ( a SS20) with lower power machines.  The
network services could be linux I suppose, perhaps on a small arm
board.  I could stick a Cirrus Logic ARM9 in a rack case. The CL board
is 200mhz with 32+ megs of ram and 128+ megs of flash, for $65.  It only
takes 0.6A of 5V power.  That would come to under $1 a day to power.
Finding such a small board to run affordably run NetBSD (I love the PF
firewall system) for a router would be a bit trickier.  Too bad that
NetBSD doesn't run on the WRT54GLs.  If it did, I could move one to a
rack case, and run long antenna leads to place one antenna on each
floor (maybe that is a bad idea, I obviously don't know much about RF). 

>    Josh, if you're avoiding Linux and appliances, are you thinking ZFS
> on Open Solaris/reeBSD?

Yes.  ZFS on Solaris on SPARC.  I really love ZFS and Solaris.  I've
loved Solaris since the mid 90s when I was exposed to it as a middle
schooler, and ZFS is for general purposes superior to anything else in
my opinion.

I also like NetBSD, but I don't believe that the ZFS port is usable
yet.  

And I do like linux more than a little.

And OSX is amazing in many small ways.  I'd love for Linux (and here I
probably mean GNOME most of all) to figure out how to improve in a large
number of areas.