hardware

The File Server (more detail)

Following on from my previous post on my file server, here is what I’m now looking at. It’s based upon various discussions on mailing lists and IRC channels. Samsung SATA CD/DVD Burner $20 (+ $8 shipping) SuperMicro 5046A $750 (+$43 shipping) RocketRAID 2300 PCIe 4x SATA $120 (+$8 shipping) Crucial 3x2G ECC DDR3-1333 $191 (+ $6 shipping) Xeon W3520 $310 Total price in cart: $1389.95 + $52.95 shipping = $1441.90 Not included: HDD, […]

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The File Server

This is the current thinking for my soon-to-be-built storage server. I should consult freebsd-hardware first. Athena Power CA-SWH01BH8 Pedestal case The above case comes with two of these backplanes close up photos of that backplane mother board? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130136 was suggseted. m/b will either need 8 SATA connections or room for several cheap SATA controllers power supply, probably dependent upon the M/B but has to be grunty enough for 8xHDD 4GB RAM? HDD: SATA

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Big storage

I’m thinking about creating a storage box. One with a lot of disk space. It will be used for backups and stuff. I will continue to backup to tape as well. I’m considering this case, which has 8xSATA hot-swap bays: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811192058 If I was buying a RAID card, I’d buy this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816131002&Tpk=areca%201120 But I may go with ZFS instead of hardware RAID.

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Quieter laptop

Yes, my laptop arrived safe and sound. Well, mostly safe. It was actually delivered to another address on campus, but it eventually arrived at Afilias. Tonight, as I wait for the phone to ring, I decide to play with the fan and see if I could shut it off. I can: # sysctl dev.acpi_ibm.0.fan=0 dev.acpi_ibm.0.fan: 1 -> 0 Checking the temp was easy and pretty soon things jumped from about 48C to just

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The laptop is coming! The laptop is coming!

Odd how grown men, myself included, get giddy about new toys. My IBM ThinkPad T41 is no longer reliable. It has taken to being heat sensitive. I suspect something inside is broken / slightly disconnected and as the heat inside increases, a connection fails. I have tried to fix it, but failed. It has been acting tempermental for about two months now. I narrowed my search down to the ThinkPad x61s: Processor: Intel®

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Building an AMD Phenom box

This post is unfinished. This is the old box: FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation. FreeBSD 7.0-CURRENT #2: Wed Sep 19 11:34:09 EDT 2007 dan@polo.unixathome.org:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/POLO WARNING: WITNESS option enabled, expect reduced performance. Timecounter “i8254” frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0 CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.80GHz (2806.38-MHz 686-class CPU) Origin = “GenuineIntel” Id = 0xf29 Stepping = 9 Features=0xbfebfbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CLFLUSH,DTS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE> Features2=0x4400<CNXT-ID,xTPR> Logical CPUs per core: 2 real memory = 536018944 (511 MB)

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New box – addenda

That computer I mentioned recently, I added a SCSI card to it and enabled the second NIC. It’s now looking pretty sweet with 5.4 running on it. With the new additions, the dmesg now also contains: isp0: port 0xd800-0xd8ff mem 0xff6fe000-0xff6fefff irq 17 at device 8.0 on pci2 I plan to make this box into a Bacula testing platform for FreeBSD 6.*, add a backup DNS server for my LAN, and make it

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New box

I got a really sweet deal on a computer: Dell Optiplex GX-260 CPU 2.4 GHz HDD 20 GB RAM 512 MB CD ROM Re-Writable NIC 3COM internal speakers build-in sound card Windows XP MS-Office XP Yes, that INCLUDES the original CDs for that software, still shrink wrapped! That alone is worth the CAD$150 price. I’ve removed the HDD, put it aside, and replaced it with an 80GB drive. I’ve installed 5.4 on it

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