C[omp]ute

From: "andrew cooke" <andrew@...>

Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2009 14:09:37 -0400 (CLT)

I'm planning to re-arrange my system, so that I can turn off my main
computer on an evening, but still have my own local network, stream music,
etc.

This is made a little more complex by living in Chile.  The only low-power
computer I can find is this - http://www.sym.cl/ficha/8001/ - which
appears to support Linux (good) but, in that form factor, cannot take PCI
cards, has space for only one disk (no RAID), and one network port.

I have a spare disk and memory, and found somewhere that sells a USB to
network adapter that is compatible with Linux -
http://www.tecno.cl/prod/ficha.asp?Prod=3876 - so the total price is a bit
over 100 pounds / 200 dollars (I realise that in the US I could get
significantly more for my money, but that's life...).

I think the VIA chip will be able to manage my firewall and stream music,
but I am less sure it's capable of running an IMAP server (particularly if
I want to search email).  So I need to change my email solution.  I think
that means getting with the times and moving to gmail (currently I run my
own imap server that feeds web-mail (squiirelmail)).

I have been subscribed for some email lists for many (over 10) years, and
always had the idea that I was creating my own archive, but web search
with Google is so much better than anything I can come up (and Beagle
still doesn't handle maildirs correctly).  So I am going to unsubscribe
from everything and simply have personal email to gmail.  As a backup I
will use pop to grab mail once a day (say) to my "work" computer, where it
can be stored on RAID.  And I am going to stop filtering with procmail by
subject/list and instead go with date (directories for year and month). 
I've just checked and it seems I can reprocess an existing file in maildir
simply by passing it (ie the filename) procmail at the command line; so I
can rewrite all my old email too, and archive it up (just in case).

On the hardware front, the plan is to buy the USB network hub first, see
if it really does work OK, and only then get the CPU.  Then configure that
and connect everything up perhaps when Paulina is away in Brazil.  It's
been difficult to find much info on the VIA chip and Linux (I get the
impression it was superseded by Atom, and that these things have only
become popular as netbooks, but I have to work with what I can find).  And
if I can turn my main computer off for half the day, this should pay for
itself in less than a year in saved electricity!

Thought I'd write all this down to see if it makes sense.  It seems to.  I
will post more updates here as I work with the hardware.

Andrew

PS This also means no more updates to LEPL for a while.  In fact after/in
parallel with this I want to generate some "art" using LEPL, rather than
extend it, so for the next few months don't expect to write any new
functionality.  Release 3.0 came out yesterday, and so far has had just
over 100 downloads with no complaints, so I hope it is OK...