Serious Techies ONLY: Linux mini server for £18 delivered

JustPassingBy

gavinp wrote: »

Hopefully, if you are still with me, you have a good appreciation of linux and strong idea of what you would use this for . . . . . . .

A very useful and informative post, Gavin. Thanks for sharing.

It's prompted me to consider replacing my present serving arrangements on a PC running all the time with one of these units. At the very least it would cut energy use by a factor of 10 - so there's a saving! The silent operation is also a big advantage.

I expect the CPU and memory should easily cope with running web and smtp servers and dealing with webmail. Skype video (which I don't use) would be a possible struggle but, optimistically, audio should be fine.

The more I think about it the more I'm tempted.

jimbms

Good post, another tip is to scour the recycle bit at your local tip, you can often make a decent maching out of old bits people place there.

JasX

JustPassingBy wrote: »

The more I think about it the more I'm tempted.....

mmmm, I don;t have a specific project in mind but am highly tempted to 'waste my money' and have a play

..... will be interesting to see follow up posts here in a few weeks to hear what anyone has managed to get up and running on the little beastie

Bowling_4_Gold

Hmm... Looks like all 3 listed by the company have been sold, unless anyone can say otherwise?

gavinp

Thanks guys - good to know that some people can appreciate this..

I have mine currently setup with the bundled 256Mb of RAM and 256Mb Compact Flash card running as an OpenVPN server to allow remote access to my network.

The Voyage Linux distro includes the OCF patches to allow use of the built-in AES hardware encryption engine - you do however need to add three entries into /etc/modules:

cryptodev
geode-aes
cryptosoft

If anyone finds it useful, this is my /etc/openvpn/server.conf file:

server 192.168.199.0 255.255.255.0
tls-server
dev tun
port 443
proto tcp-server
ca ca.crt
cert server.crt
key server.key
dh dh2048.pem
tls-auth ta.key
cipher AES-128-CBC
tls-cipher AES128-SHA
auth sha1
#comp-lzo
engine cryptodev
#status /tmp/openvpn-status.log
log /tmp/openvpn.log
mute 10
port-share 192.168.xx.xx 443
verb 3
push "dhcp-option DNS 8.8.8.8"
push "dhcp-option DNS 208.67.220.220"
push "redirect-gateway def1 bypass-dhcp bypass-dns"
max-clients 5
link-mtu 1478
group nogroup
user nobody
persist-tun
persist-key
script-security 2
fast-io
duplicate-cn
chroot /tmp
keepalive 10 600

I am still tinkering so a couple of the lines are commented out with a hash prefix.

As the VPN server is only going to be used on an ad-hoc basis, I am always looking for any good ideas to make further use of it!

Thanks

Gavin

gavinp

Bowling_4_Gold wrote: »

Hmm... Looks like all 3 listed by the company have been sold, unless anyone can say otherwise?

Hi, I just saw your reply and just did a search on ebay and yes, it does look like they have been sold. Hopefully they will get some more in if you wanted one.

Thanks

Gavin

Bowling_4_Gold

gavinp wrote: »

Hi, I just saw your reply and just did a search on ebay and yes, it does look like they have been sold. Hopefully they will get some more in if you wanted one.

Yeah, would definitely be interested in one, at that price. Shame they all sold so fast!

JustPassingBy

Bowling_4_Gold wrote: »

Yeah, would definitely be interested in one, at that price. Shame they all sold so fast!

I succumbed at about 16:00 today. Mea culpa.

But the same people are here:

http://www.buyit247.com/pcs/grade2-pc-systems/fujitsu-siemens-futro-a250-small-form-thin-client-4.html

and, doing a bit of shopping:

Fujitsu Siemens FUTRO A250 Small Form Thin-Client was successfully added to your shopping cart.

JustPassingBy

gavinp wrote: »

As the VPN server is only going to be used on an ad-hoc basis, I am always looking for any good ideas to make further use of it!

A print server. Install CUPS and printer drivers. Have CUPS advertise the printers.

USB (or serial) printers only but cheaper than what's going on Ebay.

samwsmith1

JustPassingBy wrote: »

I succumbed at about 16:00 today. Mea culpa.

But the same people are here:

http://www.buyit247.com/pcs/grade2-pc-systems/fujitsu-siemens-futro-a250-small-form-thin-client-4.html

and, doing a bit of shopping:

Thanks
Have just ordered