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

[Richard Neill]

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

This is a really clever trick.

http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/

Basically, you use Rsync (over SSH or to another disk) to get multiple 
full backups, but storing only the changed files. As a result, each 
snapshot is a full copy of the files, however you only have the space 
and time requirements of an incremental backup. The backup can then be a 
daily cron job.

Richard


P.S. You might also consider using SSDs in the machines.

1. A good SSD (eg Intel X25-M) will give about a factor 4 speedup on 
boot and application load.

2. A cheap SSD (Compact flash adapter + 4 GB CF card) only costs about 
$20, and is silent and uses less power. These are perfectly good in 
normal use, *providing* that you aren't doing lots of writes. CF cards, 
especially combined with a decent amount of RAM as disk cache give 
approximately the same performance as ordinary HDDs on read. Writes are 
about 10x slower, but your workload may allow you to live with that.
One use case would be if you want to boot up for NX, but use wifi, so 
have the Root FS on CF card, but all of /home over the network.