-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Will Rosecrans wrote: > Hello, everybody. I have an Alphaserver 1200 running Debian. It is > currently just doing NAT to share my internet connection with my LAN, > and about to be doing DHCP on my LAN once I get that configured. I now > want to make it a file server. I don't want to invest in big SCSI > drives, so I'm going to get an IDE controller. Can I just get any run > of the mill IDE PCI card, pop it in, and have at it, or are there some > caveats I need to be aware of? >
None that I'm aware of, but I normally use standard PCs for file storage (cheaper, and save the big iron for more useful work). > I'll continue to boot off the small SCSI drive I currently have the OS > on, so I don't need the machine to see the drives on its own. Just need > to store files. The PCI slots in the machine are longer than I'm used > to, but it shouldn't hurt anything, right? > Nope - 64-bit PCI and PCI-X slots are backwards compatible with regular PCI. The only thing you might run into is voltage issues - some slots (and cards) are 5 volt only, and some are 3.3 volt only. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816102045 is a universal card that has both a PATA and 2 SATA ports on it - it'll work with either 3.3v or 5v. The way to tell if it's built for universal voltage is to look for two notches cut into the PCI interface slot. A notch (IIRC) towards the front indicates a 5-volt only card, and a notch towards the back indicates a 3.3v card. > Also, under Debian/Alpha, swap space adds to memory, right? I know > under some OS's, you need to have at least as much swap as RAM in order > for it to do anything. I have 512 MB in this machine, but only a 2 GB > drive, so I don't want to dedicate > 512 MB to swap. When I get the IDE > drives set up, I can move the swap there, so it'll be a non-issue then. > You can put swap wherever you need to. With 512 MB of RAM, if you know that you're not going to see something like a slashdotting, and your memory consumption isn't too bad, you can run without swap (I do that on a lot of servers - there's only a couple that I use swap on, and those are subjected to crapfloods, spambots, DDoS's and other assorted nastiness). A lot of embedded systems don't have the space for a swap file, either. Swap space is not normal memory - it is a place for the memory manager to stash things in memory that are not actively being used in order to free up memory for active processes. It degrades performace severely - you should not run into swap in normal operations. It's a crutch to handle machines that are under-spec'd in memory. > Thanks, all! - -- GPG key available gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 06B386612 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFEC8BkXxNjpms4ZhIRAk9FAKCfHugLdJdKa6wfSBRml0VH4SvjswCgmWR9 0THrV5RW8AM2JUNfocf0HPQ= =Xf0f -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
