RIP N00b Server

It is sad to say, i think my web server is and down and out. Don't worry it most likely wont effect you, because only a select few people new and had access to my web server. The n00b server project started a few years ago, when i was getting into website design and i needed a web host to practices with. If you know me, you know i can be cheep, therefore i made my own server.

The server was made up of several striped down computer components from old computers. When i say old, there not even breaking the gigahertz mark. To be exact it was running at half of that, at a break neck speed of 500MHz. I was able to squeeze an extra 59 Hz by overclocking it. I was hoping to get more out of it but because i had all miss match memory sticks. Also this was a old mother board and bios with out overvolting or fixing memory speeds. This was all before jumper free clock settings.

The computer was packed tight with hard drives. Four drives ranging in size from 2GB to 10 GB. Each drive had it own purpose. One was used for OS and programs. Another drive was used for was open to the Internet. There was also a drive with a ntfs partition that was mapped out on my local network to act as a small filer server. The last drive was used as the swap partition (page files).

The computer became a server over night, with few installation and configurations. For Os i had a ubuntu 6.06 lts. I opted to use graphic interface, because my Linux skill were not great. Keep in mind this was my first time using Linux on a computer. I was shocked on how smooth every thing went.  The computer ran so well that, at one time it became my main computer! With Apache 2 running in the background i was able to surf the net, down load, install and program.

In later months the server began getting more jobs. Soon it was running SQL for bugzilla, SVN, and TomCat.It was great, and very quick considering what parts i made it from.  The problem came about when i, decided to upgrade to 7.1. The computer locked up in the upgrade. I have a feeling the hard drive died, or just got very corrupt.

The question is what to do with the server. My needs to have my own server has disminition, since i have access to a real web host. I my decommission it, or turn it into a gateway for my network, to ad another security layer. Also it would like be to have a encrypted tunnel to my home network. Other wise, it may become my back end to handle user profiles when i switch completely to Linux with remote profiles. who knows, but I'm up set seeing the server be offline.