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MSI Wind PC as home server?

K

kumquat

Supreme [H]ardness
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Dec 7, 2005
Messages
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I surprisingly couldn't find many people doing this.

I have Ubuntu Sever installed on an old mid-tower with a Sempron 2800+ and 512MB of RAM. I use it for a file/web/ftp server. The most demanding thing it runs is probably Movable Type (a PHP/MySQL blogging package) serving only a couple thousand total hits a day.

I'm thinking of picking up the $130 MSI Wind PC with the on-board CF slot and 1.6 GHz Atom. Put in 1 GB of RAM and a 640 GB Caviar Green drive for /home and use a 2 GB Compact Flash card mounted as /.

Seems like it would be an excellent solution, but is there anything I should know? I assume that Ubuntu (console only) will be perfectly happy on the hardware and the CPU/RAM will be sufficient for my needs, correct? Anything I'm not considering here?
 
I don't have any experience from the MSI Wind, but I use an Asus Eee Box 202 with similar specifications as server. GNU/Linux runs very well on it, performance is definitely not an issue.
 
I've been considering doing this with that exact setup --- but using a server 2008 OS instead from Dreamspark (free license for college students)

https://www.dreamspark.com/

I would like to make the server into a domain controller for about 4 PCs at my house and a small file server. I was thinking about getting a couple 1.5TB drives, running them in a software RAID 1 using the Server 2008 OS, and then redirecting and caching my docs and a home drive from each computer there.

Looks like you can get it for about 137 shipped using MSN cashback...
http://search.live.com/cashback/products/offerings/30000/14092853
 
Wow, nice, I'm going to have to think about this, I've been wanting a new lower power, cheap and quiet server box to replace my old one, something with a gigabit NIC and able to run 3.5inch drives, and this fits the bill. Hmmm, wonder if I should spend $25 for the dual-core atom version. On the one hand the price is right, on the other the most work this will do is transcoding non-HD video, I'd think the solo is capable enough.
 
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Oh, yes, forgot to update.

It's fantastic. Sits in a closed storage locker, doing its thing. I have Ubuntu 8.04 LTS installed on a Kingston Elite Pro CF card.

I'm not sure the Atom is really up to video encoding if you do a lot of that. I don't even have X11 installed on this guy.
 
Well not so much encoding, but transcoding. Which...I'm not sure how much difference there is, heh, but when looking into mediatomb, I was told my current EPIA 800 box could handle it. Heck, some people mod their netgear NAS box to do transcoding video streams, so I'd think the Atom 270 should handle it. I'm just like, I could spend $25 and get a dual-core, so I'd have some more horses if I needed it, but then I'm going to assume that comes with more heat? So may not need it.

Now I'm trying to decide between a 1TB WD green drive and a 640GB WD AAKS. I own both and I know they're quiet, just didn't know if I needed the performance of the 640GB. I'm guessing not.
 
Ok, I bit, ordered one and the 1TB green drive. Now that you installed the OS on the CF, would you do it again if you had to? What's the advantage to doing it on the CF instead of the HD, boot speed? In the grand scheme of things, I'd hope the computer wouldn't have to boot more than once a year once it's done being setup. I've been running FreeBSD on my past few servers but I might go Ubuntu on this one.
 
Yeah. I like having the OS on a separate drive and having the entire hard drive mounted to /home. Super easy to reinstall or upgrade the OS without having to restore /home and easy to upgrade the drive itself without having to reinstall the OS.
 
CF cards are MUCH slower than a hard-drive and have very limited write cycles.

Prolly won't matter with a linux distribution of whatever sort, but you don't want to run a windows machine (because of the page file) on a CF card.
 
I have a Wind PC, got it open box from newegg for 93 dollars. Construction on the box is surprisingly good quality, everything fits together very very nicely. I have a 250gb HDD, DVDRW and a 4gb Kingston Compact flash drive installed. So far I have installed Vista, Windows 7, & Ubuntu. Windows i have installed to the Sata HDD and both run smooth and will work as a HTPC for 720p and lower content with mediaportal as a front end. I have booted Ubuntu off the CF and it runs great good, but suffers with some load times, but for basic use its just fine. If you use this box as a file server, I dont know if the CF will hinder drive performance on the gigabit ethernet, but, I have heard of people installing FreeNAS on CF cards and running 2 Sata Drives. YOu could also add USB drives later if you needed the room, just make sure you have only one drive per controller hooked up.
 
I put my wind system together today, I agree with it being a nice small system, easy to put together. I'm putting 2GB of RAM and a 1TB HD. Leaving the ODD out, I'll install via an external drive. I'm just going ahead and installing ubuntu onto the HD, as soon as 9.04 comes out. C'mon Ubuntu, it's 1215am, I want my oompa loompa now!
 
Ok, so I've been working on this box the past few nights. Had some initial issues where USB boot devices weren't detected by the box, so I went to Fry's and picked up a SATA DVD drive for it, I wasn't going to put one in since almost the only time it would be used is for install. Well it turned out the issues were caused by my KVM. For some reason with it plugged into the box, it wouldn't detect boot devices, though it detected a USB drive just fine when booted to the live CD. Unplugging the kvm, it's able to boot to the USB drive.

So when booting to the ubuntu 9.04 desktop cd, it was able to start the install, but would fail with an I/O error, then boot to the live CD. Ran I ran the check disc on the CD, that passed. So I made the USB flash installer. I also noticed this had the 1.30 BIOS on it, which I don't know if that's the first version, but it's what's mentioned in the manual. Went to the website, found the 1.70 BIOS. Made a boot USB drive, updated the BIOS. Since I had it made already, booted to the USB install and successfully installed to the HD. So I don't know if it was the KVM, BIOS, or going from CD to HD that caused the I/O error.

System noise is so-so, which I'm going to have to decide before my 30 days are up if it's a problem. When the system isn't doing much, the fan is quiet enough, but if I start doing doing things, whether it's opening a new website or opening the package manager, the CPU spikes and along with it the fan.

For what I'm really wanting it to do, I should just be using the server package, I just thought it'd be neat (and lazy) to have a GUI to work with. Eventually I'll get this setup close to how I want it and see how the noise is, and if it's still spiking, I may go server + webmin.
 
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