[GRLUG] Net-top as server?

[Adam Tauno Williams]

On Wed, 2009-08-19 at 14:02 -0400, Steve Romanow wrote:
> Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
> > This makes more sense to be;  the computing power per $ of the netbook
> > families just doesn't make sense.
> > On the other hand, I've found, if you have a solid Internet connection
> > just buy a VM from somebody like Linnode and use that as your server -
> > $20 a month for something way more powerful than a netbook and the power
> > cost [to you] is zero.  You still get all the power of your own box from
> > console & root access on down.  And the added benefit that you don't
> > have to worry about the house cat piddling on the thing.
> Could you use such a machine for local services like dnsmasq, upnp 
> server, etc?  I thought it would be best to have most of these services 
> "inhouse" especially if the disk storage holding the media is local.

You could, but you wouldn't want to.  Didn't know what the purpose of
the server was, just throwing the though out there.  For DNS and
Bonjour/Zeroconf/Avahi/UPNP/name-of-the-month you'd certainly want a box
on the LAN;  and you could use literally [almost] anything.  I'd wager
you could find a $25 computer that could do that, then buy two so you
have space.  Nothing stinks worse than your home LAN going down on a
Friday afternoon.

If you want a traditional file server I'd probably use something like
the $125 aforementioned units and attach an external hard drive for the
actual storage.  That way when I go on vacation, or the house is on
fire, I can just grab it on the way out [who cares about the computer].

But, except for multimedia files, I don't know why you'd want a local
[home] fileserver.  I prefer just to rsync my workstation / laptop to
somewhere off site (again the house fire/flood/cat-pee issue).