Building my own small home server

[superuser]

Hello!

I have to say, I really love Gentoo. In fact, I like to so much that I decided to run a small home server with Gentoo Linux. It's mainly supposed to store files that can be accessed from all PCs that are connected to the network cablewise and the notebooks which have WLAN. As it's only got a Pentium II 233 Mhz, it isn't capable of running anything more than a few daemons (ssh for secure network mounting, vncserver for remote X controll, the lot), but that's all I need it to do. I did all this and I'm happy everything is working quite the way I want it to.

There are some problems that I wasn't able to solve, though:
1. I don't need the server to be up 24/7. I need it between let's say 4 pm and 12 pm, in the meantime it's just utterly useless. Is there a way to make it boot at 4 pm, and have it shutdown at 12 pm (ok, shutdown being a pretty easy task)? It doesn't neccessarily have to be a proper shutdown, anything that reduces the power consumption is fine (how about stand bye?).
2. The computer needs way too much power. I measured it consumes 120 Watt, whereas some of the professional Network Storage Servers(tm) (e.g. from Longshine, Buffallo) have a power consumption of only 8 Watt when in standy-bye and 40 Watt when they are heavily used. Mine's always 120 Watt. What can I do to reduce the power consumption under Linux? Are there any kernel settings, tools, hard disk parameters to adjust?
3. The fans are just awful! The computer has to be absolutely super-silent. For it is a Pentium II, I already tried to remove the cpu fan and the thing was, the system was still working properly. I haven't been brave enough to leave it unplugged for a long time, though. Anyhow, the real buzzing noise is produced by the power supply's fan. Shall I try to remove that cooler as well? OK, the fans certainly are there on (some) purpose but I once had the whole PC covered by a beadspread for quite some time (2 days) and although it ran quite hot, I have to admit, it did it without moaning. Subsequently, if it survived that experiment, why should the power supply's fan matter?

My budget is limited to about 75-100$.

Thanks for reading!
su

[fangorn]

2. you can try to get the power saving techniques up and running, but I dont think it will give you much benefit. Your desktop hardisks have a limited count of spinup spindown cycles, so you cant shut them down as often as you could with a laptop disk.

3. The fans are there for a reason. Heat sinks and heat spreaders were not as effective at the time as they have to be today. If you simply remove them your machine will die quite fast. You would have to replace the fans with more quiet parts from today. In case of the CPU fan this is not that easy.

You will never reach the low energy consumption of a specialized product. The benefit of the old computer solution is, that you can specify and run useful tasks. I have a always on computer that does mythtv recordings, Internet routing, firewall, download client, web server, ... You name it, you have it
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[superuser]

Anybody else on this?
Please!



I didn't quite figure out the hdparm magic that were suitable for such a server.

[rokstar83]

As per the power issue, you could try a swsup2/wakeonlan combination. I can't say i've ever tried something like that but you may have some luck with it. You'd need to send the magic packet from a computer when you want it to come back up. Also you need to buy a motherboard that supports Wake-on-lan and I don't know how common it is these days, but its atleast something to look into.

[albright]

You can buy very quiet power supplies which are not
that expensive. The new power supplies are likely
more powerful than you need but that probably means
they'll be even quieter in your machine. This is a good
place to look around: http://www.quietpcusa.com/index.html

I guess your machine is too old to have an auto power on option
in the bios (all new machines have this). But check for it. Then
you can just set the machine to come on at a certain time.

There's also a bios option for power back on after power failure.
If you've got that maybe there's something you could do with
just a timer on your outlet ...

good luck

[tarpman]

If it's that slow, IMO you shouldn't even put X on it. ssh and samba are plenty for remote control and file ops.

[superuser]

[timeBandit]

You're on a pretty tight budget to be replacing much, so don't forget low-tech tactics:

#1. If your BIOS doesn't support wake-on-lan, a lamp/applicance timer and a cron job can give you the scheduled uptime you want. You'll need a timer that accepts a grounded plug--a little unusual but they exist. Plug PC into timer, set timer ON a bit before you need the server each day, and OFF at 12:15-12:30am. Set a cron job to shut down the OS at 12:00am--about 15-30 minutes before the timer will cut power. This won't hurt the PC--it's no different than switching off a power strip. Check and adjust the timer occasionally, especially around Daylight Savings changes!

#3: A clean fan is a quiet fan. If you're handy enough to swap parts, you're handy enough to service the fans. Remove each fan and clean accumulated dust and funk from the blades and housing. Use rubbing alcohol, multi-purpose cleaner, cotton swabs, whatever does the trick--just don't immerse the fans in liquid or soak the bearings. Get them scrupulously clean--like new.

Once cleaned, lubrication is order. Most muffin fans have a foil or mylar label covering the hub. Carefully peel this back and lightly lubricate the bearing--a drop or three of 3-in-1 or other light machine oil should do the trick. Reaffix the label and rub firmly to adhere. You'll probably want to repeat this whole procedure every year or two from now on.

On an older machine of mine, this simple service cut fan noise by more than half. They're now drowned out by the hard drives, which unfortunately can't be quieted this easily.
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[superuser]

My 1997's motherboard does support:
* WAKE on LAN
* WAKE on Input Key (which doesn't work, frankly)
* WAKE on automatically at any given time
* WAKE on modem activation

It really looks like I've just the right machine for the job in hand.

What do you think about this setting:

[superuser]

Finally, I made the pc quite quiet.

I disconnected the old power supply, opened it, but got rid of it soon after not being able to find a decent fan for it. Then a friend of mine brought me some of his not all in any way special power supplies (by which I mean that it was not one of those fancy "very quiet parts"), which was unbelievably quite. You cannot hear it, and despite me seeing the fan run, I swear it makes no noise at all. The cpu fan was a bit of a problem at first, but we got that managed soon, by employing the 5V rather than the 12V supply.
Well, one will ask why quite quiet then?!

It's the hard disk. It is DREADFULLY loud. Not only can you hear every write/read access, but it also makes a constant "ssssp" noise. The answer is pretty easy: Get a new hd. Any recommendations for an IDE hd about ~250GB that is rather quiet?

Besides, I want to have an encrypted partition on that. Which cipher method should I use, given that it's only got a modest 460.80 bogomips. I'd also be graceful to get a link to a How To document or something on how to set up an encrypted partition. How would you mount that partition over the local net?

Thanks!

[blandoon]

I went with a Western Digital Caviar SE16 - mine is SATA, but there should be a somewhat similar IDE version available as well. For general purpose recommendations on quiet/silent stuff I wouldn't go anywhere but here: http://www.silentpcreview.com

And, re: putting X on the server, on that machine I think it'll be intolerably slow and a hopeless memory hog. Furthermore, I think Azureus certainly will run in a CLI, and at any rate, there are plenty of other BitTorrent clients that will. Check this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_BitTorrent_software
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[bjd]

I have a similar issue with hard drive noise on my fileserver. What I aim to do is to mount it in some sort of enclosure which should make it quiter. Either one of those 5.25bay mounting ones, or one of the external variety. This system lives on a shelf on my desk so either way the enclosure will be sitting next to it with the power & IDE cables snaking in somehow.

If you want a new drive the new Samsung Spinpoints are supposedly the quietest around. I have a Seagate in my HTPC which is whisper quiet, but its only 20Gig.

Rtorrent is ncurses based and should work perfectly over ssh btw.
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[dj_farid]

You want to run rTorrent on the machine. Once you learn to use it, it is the best around.

You probably don't want to run X on that machine at all.

There are several quiet harddrives out there. See if you can find a Samsung 5200 rpm drive. They are quiet and does not consume much power since they spin slower than most other drives. There are no drives bigger than 160 GB of this model though.
If you can't find this drive, go to silentpcreview as someone already mentioned.
Get a mounting rack that takes the noise from the disk. Again silentpcreview will help you with this.

A P2 will do ok for the tasks you want to do. P2's does not consume a lot of power, but P3's consumes even less, and would probably fit your mainboard.
See if you can find an used P3 CPU to replace the P2. You can probably find one for free if you are lucky.
If you want to, you can underclock it to save even more power. A P3 slot-1 500-800 MHz CPU can be run without a fan without any problems.

[nobspangle]

I've always found segate drives to be the quietest.