Need Advice: Building a LINUX BOX, what are the hardware reqrmnts?

[RDSport323]

I was planning on building a Linux box to be used as a router, possibly FTP server, or maybe a CS server. A few questions... What are the minimum requirements for this box? Could I use a Pentium 266 w/ MMX, and 128mb of RAM? I guess what my question is, I heard that the most important piece of hardware for a Linux Box is the read/write access time of the HD, and that everything else after the computer boots up, is completely independant of the processor, so a fast processor isn't necessary. True?

And is 128mb of Memory enough? And is it possible to have an FTP, WWW, and CS server up at the same time? Since they use different ports rigfht?

Well, wish me luck, I'm starting to gather all of my hardware together, and hopefully things will go smoothly,
and thanks for your suggestions/advice.

 

[Quaggoth]

Linux will run on a Toaster, A peice of tinfoil, some bailing wire, a few peices of duct tape, a magnet, and a car battery

 

[doug]

For the router all you need is a 486 unless you have a large number of people using it (over 50).

For the ftp and www it depends on how much traffic you expect and if there will by dynamic content on your www server. For a small system that is only getting hit by a small number of people a 486 is fine again, your 128MB ram should be loads unless you expect a bunch of traffic.

I don't know the requirements for a CS server (CounterStrike?). Again how many people do you want to host? 4,8,16,32??

Yes you can have all of them running at the same time. Will you be hosting the game on a lan or the internet? You might find the number of players, ftp and www traffic more limited by your bandwidth than the computer.

 

[CollegeGuy]

If you are going to be running all of those services at once you will probably want a faster CPU and more RAM. Of course, this is dependent upon how much traffic you expect to recieve.

 

[RDSport323]

Well, all of this will be running on a university T1 or T3, not quite sure.. so, I dont think bandwidth or traffic will be oto much of a problem...

FTP, no more than 3-5 people will be on at a time ,a nd for counterstrike, Im guessing, no more than 24 people?

If Linux could run on the most basic and elementary machines, then why don't more people use it? I was thinking about using a 550mhz P3, but, now Im thinking more along the lines of a P266 w/ MMX... Hmm... But, does HD speed really matter? And also, currently I Have a 20gb as a slave in my HD. I partitioned it about 8gb (drive D), and 12gb (drive F) w/ drives C and E as my primary. I have no files on drive D, but I have a few things on drive F. If I took out the hd from my computer, and used it as a primary on the linux box, could I install Linux onto it w/o hving to repartition/format my HD?

thanks!

 

[velvtelvis]

I've run a simple router on a 486 with 32 megs ram, a floppy and ramdisk.

Why don't more people use it?

They want their games.

They want an OS that will work out of the box because despite all geek talk, they are scared of actualy using their computers.

 

[RTM]

if u got it , use it!

24 on CS is alot! i would run what u had planned cause, why not. a p3/550 isn't expensive and damn the more the marrier. and as for hdd, yes to some extent. if i where you i would get an old 4.5gig UW 7200 SCSI drive. They woop azz w/ linux and shove the linux box int he corner. cuase once its tweaked right and running(which is the slow part) it will run 24/7 forever!

and in out

RTM
Novell/NT/2000 admin (running a linux router )

 

[xtreme2k]

Which linux you guys use for 486s?

Most of the newer distro require 586 due to optimisation.

 

[velvtelvis]

Peanut is what i've used.

It's a full linux distro in only 50 megs.

Here are the google listings for tiny distros.

 

[inquis]

about CS servers:

i have some friends on campus that run CS servers on Linux... one person has a dual p3 550 with 512 megs of ram, and it STILL gets laggy when we get up to 24 people...

CS servers take some serious hardware.

'course, for an FTP server and a web server, those hardware specs sound good to me. your requirements should probably be as follows:

fast hdd
more ram
faster proc

hope this helps.

-inq