Tag Archives: server

It lives!

Posted by on 11 June 2010 No comments

Well the semester is over and again I find that I have time for blogging.  I’ve made some changes to the blog that I hope will increase the readability for my 0 readers.  I’ve changed the theme to something a little easier on the eyes, and I’ve also added some HTML 5 tags and enabled search engine indexing.  Not really sure how or why that was ever turned off, but I expect to see some google spam traffic soon.  But if I really want to see any traffic at all, I need to start writing content more often! Might start with some stuff about my server and Ubuntu 10.04… my honeymoon with Windows Server 2008 R2 is over and I’ve come to find it very painful to work with.

This summer is looking to be a good one for tech.  I’m going to build my girlfriend a computer, and I might also build one for my roommate.  If I get a job, I’ll be building one for myself as well!  But first I need to actually find a job…

In the mean time I’ve been dedicating far too much time to my garden.  I’ve planted spinach and they are doing really well.  Unfortunately, none of my other seeds have germinated yet.  Also I’ve currently killed 5 of 6 strawberries.  I might deviate from the normal ‘technology’ topic and post a little about geeky gardening.  I think spinach was a great choice to plant, and I’m glad that it’s doing well, because spinach can go in just about anything.

Atom Server Complete

Posted by on 29 March 2010 No comments

So after some painstaking construction and setup and configuration I finally got my Atom server up.  Now originally I was going to show people how to build a computer using that setup, however I realized that the computer had a preinstalled power supply, a preinstalled CPU, and all it really was was putting in the RAM and connecting everything together.  So while I still may do a guide on how to build a computer using that machine, I think my main guide will use either my Dell XPS or my second hand PC.

The final hardware configuration (and links to sites where I purchased material) is as follows:

The online prices have changed, but I think the total cost to me was about $180.

I got Windows Server 2008 R2 setup, and I’ll be posting a guide on how I made a bootable USB. Here is a screenshot of proof that I finally got it working!

Atom Windows ServerStill not sure if I am going to stick with Windows Server.  I may switch to Windows Home Server, or maybe just over to Ubuntu Server 10.4 when released.

Boot from USB Nightmare

Posted by on 25 March 2010 No comments

My motherboard and RAM came, and while I’m waiting on the case I’ve been attempting to rig it up with another power supply to get the ball rolling.

I’m having terrible difficulty making a bootable USB, mainly because my laptop’s charger cable died so I don’t have a Windows machine to make one in.  Will post a full report once I manage to install Windows Server 2008 R2.

Blashphemy!

Posted by on 13 March 2010 No comments

So I’m still looking into replacing my giant server with a budget of $200.  Currently what I have so far is:

This brings me to about $160, well under budget.  I’ll cannibalize the 500 gig hard drive from the existing server, and borrow the DVD drive to install (dun dun DUNNNN) Windows Server 2008 R2.  I got a free copy through Microsoft’s Dreamspark, and I’m gonna try it out.  I’ll back up all the data on the 500 gig drive, and I wont touch the Ubuntu machine’s 60 gig OS drive, but I’m hoping to give it an honest try and see what Microsoft has to offer when it comes to a home server. Expected power usage is about 20 watts, which is about a tenth of the current power usage of the Dell server.

I dunno what to expect from using MS Server, but I want to at least try.  If I hate it, I can always just go back to Ubuntu Server 9.10.

Possible 540house server “upgrade”

Posted by on 4 February 2010 No comments

So there really is no reason for the server to be on the machine its on right now. The server is a P4 3.0GHz with 1GB PC3200 400MHz RAM in a 7 year old Dell configuration. The thing must suck a lot of power. To save some money in the long run, I’m thinking about switching it to an Atom machine. Here is the possible configuration:

Would be about $150, and according to the PSU calculator, would drop my power consumption from 229 watts to 54 watts.  A 175 watt saving will save me about $150 in electricity, if assuming $0.10 per kWh.  Then again we split the electricity bill 5 ways, so I’d really only save $30 a year, but I think of it as an investment.  I just hope the savings in electricity won’t also mean I lose computing power.

I’m gonna post on reddit to see if they have any advice.

New Router!

Posted by on 17 January 2010 No comments

I just got a Linksys WRT54GL and flashed it with Tomato and man is it amazing! I may be susceptible to placebos but it even seems like just browsing the net is faster! But more importantly, it actually works, much better than my previous router. Plus the NAT Loopback rule is fixed so I can actually access my home server from the external domain!

The new main storage server for this domain is http://540.cheesejaguar.com, and hopefully this will be a good reliable storage place now that I have a reliable router.

Day 1: Complete

Posted by on 13 January 2010 No comments

We got to Cal Poly, had some fun at the beach, and drove around in a frenzy for about an hour trying to figure out parking. We ended up paying for parking and meeting up with Kerry and we got some delicious BBQ at Mo’s. Now I am about to sleep on a cot and Kat on the couch. Success!

In terms of this website, I figured out something cool. I now have 540.cheesejaguar.com setup to be the address of the server that is physically at 540house, so now I can sort of bypass the 75MB storage limit on this web hosting. Hey, I can’t complain, for $30 a year 75MB is not too shabby. Especially since that includes a domain.