[ltp] Thinkpad takes a coffee bath

[Michelle Klein-Hass]

On Sunday 23 January 2005 01:42 pm, Christopher Sawtell wrote:
> Those old lappies make nice firewall boxes.

And slightly newer lappies, with or without their LCD screens, should make 
wonderful servers. 

I'm still getting ready to press two headless ThinkPad 570s into action in my 
network, one as a firewall, the other as an outward-facing server. My ISP DSL 
Extreme gives me three static IP addresses and allows servers, so I have to 
set up an experimental Internet-facing server...it's a geek imperative! It 
looks like I'm going to also buy a third headless 570 from my friend -- he 
initially bought ten of them in hopes of building a cluster, and gave up 
after he couldn't get them to boot off of Compact Flash -- to use as a 
portable server for San Fernando Valley Linux User Group meetings. 

What to put on a portable server? How about a portable mirror of Debian? How 
about Linux .ISOs? How about local FTP and local chat servers? One of our 
members brought around a mATX desktop for this purpose for a while, but 
stopped because he just hated dragging the box around. 

This will be easier to bring to meetings. Also, because this new meeting venue 
we will begin using next month has wireless connectivity and some people 
don't like wireless because of the security problems, setting up the box as a 
router between the wireless subnet and a private wired subnet would be a very 
good thing indeed. I know I'd feel safer behind such a configuration! :-) In 
cases where we're at our old meeting spot which doesn't have connectivity, 
this machine would allow for a local LAN configuration.

The hardware stuff is cake for me...I've pretty much got some of this ready to 
go. But the software stuff...that's where the learning experience comes in! I 
have lots still to learn...still a Linux padawan here, as my fights with 
sound on my 600e shows amply. One day I will be a Linux Jedi. One day...
-- 
Michelle Klein-Hass
Box 2273, Van Nuys, CA 91404-2273
Brought to you by Linux, KDE and KMail...try it, you'll like it!