[ltp] IBM Thinkpad T41 type 2373-7fu; recommendations for auction purchase and *nix type

[Joerg Bruehe]

Hi Andy, all!


Andy Graybeal wrote:
> [[...]]
>=20
> I ended up getting 6 laptops each for $60 at the auction this past
> Saturday.  [[...]]
>=20
> [[...]]
>=20
> The machines are going to be used to write documents, spreadsheets, tak=
e
> minutes, research information on websites; not development type tasks.
> In some cases, the users will be NX'ing into the central server to do
> their work, or booting onto our network and into an LTSP environment
> (not even requiring a harddrive necessarily when booting off the networ=
k).

What I recommend in general, and with older machines in particular:
Do backups!  Do more backups!  Do more frequent backups!

Of course, how to do that is a matter of personal preference. I have
decided on these principles:
a) Let the backup be a filesystem, not some package file, I want to be
   able to access each saved file directly.
   So I won't create tarballs, cpio files or any other big pack.
b) Let each backup create a full copy of the structure it handled.
   I don't want to combine files from several differential backups in a
   restore.
c) I want to have not just user data backups, every once in a while I
   take full system backups. I don't want to install a replacement (if
   needed) from scratch, I want to copy a working installation to it.
d) Let the backup be to a disk which is not mounted during normal
   operation, so that it can't be accidentally changed.
e) To prevent against that disk failing, use at least two, alternating
   in turn.

So I got me a really cheap machine (a thin client) with two external USB
disk drives. The backup software I use is "dirvish".


Good luck with those machines - my current R51 is more than 5 years old
by now (used infrequently only) and still works fine, and I exchanged
the disk not because of problems but because I needed more capacity.

Regards,
J=F6rg

--=20
Joerg Bruehe  - persoenliche Aeusserung / speaking only for himself
mailto:joerg.bruehe@web.de