> Hence, my questions are as follows:
> 1. is this machine sufficient to run linux as a web/file server for me
> and a few friends?
It will be sufficient (even the performance will be ok if you do not plan to
do heavy processing on the web server, for example decoding and encoding of
videos or similar).
I set up a LAMP with joomla 1.6 today with 11.4 as virtual server (home use)
for only a few users and only 512 MB RAM, the installation (without any DE)
itself is less than 1GB harddisk space. The RAM in use is most of the time
less than 250 MB with a few peaks where it goes higher.
> 2. also, is it okay to rlly run this laptop 24/7? (its a rlly old
> laptop after all)
I would not rely on that, laptopts are not made for this kind of usage, esp.
if the machine is old, but on the other hand, just try it, nothing to loose.
> 3. lastly, altho I prefer using opensuse, but if I dont need any DE at
> all, would Arch be a better solution? (Its known to be very small and
> light)
openSUSE will be fine for that.
If it turns out that the machine is not suitable as a server (I never used a
laptop as such). You still can turn it into a lowend laptop for normal use
with a desktop environment. I would use one of the light ones like xfce or
lxde. Gnome will also work but maybe you need to disable some services
(preload and tracker come to my mind) to avoid sluggish behaviour.
Did you check if your hardware (wireless!, graphics card should work with
vesa in the worst case) works with linux?
–
PC: oS 11.3 64 bit | Intel Core2 Quad Q8300@2.50GHz | KDE 4.6.3 | GeForce
9600 GT | 4GB Ram
Eee PC 1201n: oS 11.4 64 bit | Intel Atom 330@1.60GHz | KDE 4.6.0 | nVidia
ION | 3GB Ram
My Sandbox PC is an athlon-1100. It currently has 2GB RAM, but it was not so long ago that it had only 512MB of RAM. It runs nicely on openSUSE-11.4 LXDE desktop. With only 640MB of RAM, I do recommend the lightweight LXDE desktop.
If that PC has a DVD reader, you will be able to install openSUSE-11.4 LXDE from DVD.
this laptop has a DVD reader
the video card is Intel something (not too sure i ll double check it this coming monday)
i ll also check the wireless card model on monday
Im wondering if there is a way to install opensuse without any DE just the console interface?
On 05/14/2011 01:38 PM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
> On 2011-05-14 20:06, BeyondSora wrote:
>> Im wondering that if this machine is sufficient to run linux as a
>> server
>
> If the load is light, probably yes.
For many years, my NFS, Subversion, and SMB file and print server was a Sony
laptop with 256 MB RAM and a 333 MHz CPU. It did very well with a light load. I
had purchased it as a refurbished unit in 1998, and it finally died in October
2010. That system has no GUI installed - it is command line only.
As I needed to have a parallel port, it was replaced with a used Dell laptop
with a 1.6 GHz CPU and 512MB of RAM.
The Intel video card is important to know. Some of the old i855GM Intel cards do not work well with any kernel after the 2.6.27 kernel, which means for some openSUSE-11.1 was the last openSUSE GNU/Linux to work well with that graphics.
That is also important to know. If possible I recommend installing with a wired connection to the Internet, and setting up one’s wireless later.
Did you take a look at my text mode installation link: Text mode install from liveCD (which is an ncurses install which works in a full screen text/ncurses mode).
the video card is Intel something (not too sure i ll double check it this coming monday)
i ll also check the wireless card model on monday
Perhaps they will allow you to boot from a liveCD and either from the DE or runlevel 3 as root run
lspci -nnk
and , for a wireless card on the USB bus
lsusb
also, is it okay to rlly run this laptop 24/7? (its a rlly old laptop after all)
Check for correct operation of the cooling fan
Run this in a cool, dry, well ventilated environment (not hidden in a closed cubard)
Remove the battery, it only takes a faulty temp sensor (the one located in the battery pack) when running 24/7 to cause overcharging and a fire risk, use a UPS if you want to allow for those short power outages
And,
This is an old machine, give the internals a good but careful clean, pay extra attention to the cooling system, if not sure how to go about this, either come back to us with make and model, or google it.
[Update]
So, it turned out both the video card and wireless card work perfectly out of box. Hardware accel (altho a bit laggy) works fine as well
However, the harddrive contains several bad sectors DD:
Now, not sure if i should get it D:
maybe hook up a usb drive to the machine and use that as replacement for the harddrive? :S
So, that’s one thing, we know the machine itself is working
However, the harddrive contains several bad sectors DD:
Now, not sure if i should get it D:
maybe hook up a usb drive to the machine and use that as replacement for the harddrive? :S
Or buy an SSD to replace the laptop’s HDD, put openSUSE on it, and use an external drive for extra storage. Running openSUSE from an USB disk will definitely not speed up things, an SSD in older laptops does.
From what I have read, it is possible to mark bad sectors in GNU/Linux so that they are not used, … but it is not something I have done myself nor participated in someone doing same, so other than say I’ve seen posts on the web with suggestions for this, I can’t provide good detailed advice.
A USB drive is slow. And SSD hd very expensive. Still, there must be people who have old regular 40GB or 80GB IDE drives that they would willingly give away for free.
On 2011-05-16 23:36, oldcpu wrote:
> From what I have read, it is possible to mark bad sectors in GNU/Linux
> so that they are not used, … but it is not something I have done
> myself nor participated in someone doing same, so other than say I’ve
> seen posts on the web with suggestions for this, I can’t provide good
> detailed advice.
…because it is not currently necessary with contemporary hard disks
(since I don’t remember when), because hard disks can remap bad sectors, so
that the operating system is not aware of it.
But there are options when running mkfs to mark bad sectors. That’s easy,
the manual says how - at least for ext3. Others I don’t remember.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)
