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| Wednesday, June 30th, 2010 at 11:08:17 PM #45998 |
 Overlord Member 'Supreme Ruler' Level 16 Posts: 1,068 Submissions: 19  | I must have a rant. Fucking server is pissing me off. Granted, it's a dual core 64bit and I've put Windows XP pro on it (lol) but, dammit, soooo close. It loaded every driver I need except the freaking NIC so I can't use the windows update service. It also MUST be networked as that is the whole point. The OS's supported for this model are Linux, Novell, Windows servers and believe it or not, windows 2000, but nothing for XP, Vista or Windows 7. I tried the Windows 2000 drivers. Next I shall try the others. If all else fails I'm going to get a usb wireless nic. Bwahahahaha. If that fails I'm getting FreeBSD 64bit CLI. I have a windows 2000 CD and license laying around somewhere here but I'm afraid I'll have to load every single driver and I just CBF! BTW, if you do decide to get one of these servers and fuck around with it, the damn thing is loud. You'll have to run it regularly from a distant unoccupied room. I have this in my livingroom and if I watched tv, I would not be able to hear over the thing. Toasty, if you're going to get one of these things, seriously, don't plan to put in in your bedroom. If you spent any amount of time around this thing you would need hearing protection per OSHA standards. |
The Overlord rules the Universe. |
| Wednesday, June 30th, 2010 at 11:19:07 PM #45999 |
 Toasty SysOp Level 40 Posts: 7,388 Submissions: 227 | Don't use Windows 2000, you can only use two cores (so if you want to upgrade the processor later, you'll have to do the OS as well), and it is only 32-bit. I used W2K Server for a while for YN, works great, but the server itself was outdated. I find that Server 2003 is the most stable. I've ran Server 2008 (Vista core) and it is a piece of shit, NEVER use it for a production box. Server 2008 R2 (Windows 7 Core) is only a mere step above the Vista build. Windows Server 2003 (R2 is still XP based, but a service pack with little extra) does support 64 bit, and depending on the license, several cores. I'm not sure if you're a fan of *nix, but I'm not (surprise!). Since I can't stand the OS, I can't spend any time learning how to harden it, and won't use a loose OS for a production server. (Or are you just doing this for learning/development?) As for the server noise, I know all about that -- the W2K Server box was loud as shit, slept with it for over a year despite the noise...Glad I'm using a box I built now. Your driver problem is going to be the x64-based XP. The drivers for that version are extremely rare, and personally I've never seen a 64-bit version of XP for sale, only on a few systems I've worked on. If you're going to only use it for development (i.e. no port forwarding to the box, cannot be pinged, etc) I would say just leave the NIC out (most servers have at least two, but I assume both aren't working). Run all your pages as localhost, and go from there. |
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| Wednesday, June 30th, 2010 at 11:35:00 PM #46002 |
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Overlord Member 'Supreme Ruler' Level 16 Posts: 1,068 Submissions: 19 | I'm a big unix fan but I wanted a GUI interface this time. Sometimes my SAMBA shares start acting bitchy. I bought this to be my main media server. It must be networked. I just put two 1 Terabyte SATA drives in it. Until I looked it up on the internet, I didn't think I could put XP on a 64bit system. Turns out I could. I'm going to try that 2003 driver you mentioned tomorrow because I'm hoping it will work. BTW, I won't be serving to the public. This is LAN only. I have a WAN server in a colocation facility already but it's just my toy. I don't actually do anything productive with it except try to program shitty webpages using SQL and PHP in my spare time (lately this has been NONE). I was using it to do collaborative music over the interwebz but it's so much slower than having the musicians in person. |
The Overlord rules the Universe. |
| Wednesday, June 30th, 2010 at 11:39:54 PM #46005 |
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Toasty SysOp Level 40 Posts: 7,388 Submissions: 227 | Media server -- like sharing music? Get whatever then, as long as your drives have decent throughput, the processor being stuck at 32-bit, the RAM being limited to 3.5GB, and OS don't really matter. Hopefully you've considered gigabit connections throughout your LAN (if the load will be decent at all). Not sure of your exact scenario however. Some LANs are just local, others are wireless and shared among neighbors who clog up the router. |
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| Saturday, July 3rd, 2010 at 2:04:33 PM #46179 |
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Overlord Member 'Supreme Ruler' Level 16 Posts: 1,068 Submissions: 19 | That laptop docking station turned out not to inherently work. I would have had to spend time finding drivers for it. Only the USB hub driver's auto loaded. When I plugged my mouse into it, there was horrible lag. Makes me wonder if it was 2.0 compliant or still 1.0 standard. Either way I figured if I had to spend time researching a driver it should be for the NIC itself and after some time I found the integrated NIC type and model and was able to go to the manufacturer's website and get XP drivers for it. It now works! Yeehooey! It's gigabit over ethernet and I happened upon a Gigabit Linksys router at a garage sale for $2. This is one of the great things about my life: every techy thing I need seems to fall into my lap. Now I need to figure out if this model of server Dell Poweredge 860 supports 3Mbps HDD transfer rate or if it should be crippled with a jumper pin down to 1.5Mbps. Right now I have the jumper pin on to be on the safe side. I don't even know how to look this up so if you have any guidance... I'm listening. And thanks for letting me rant. I know nobody cares but it feels good to get it out. |
The Overlord rules the Universe. |
| Saturday, July 3rd, 2010 at 2:07:46 PM #46180 |
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Overlord Member 'Supreme Ruler' Level 16 Posts: 1,068 Submissions: 19 | Oh, and on another note... it didn't have an optical drive (DVD/CD) so I pulled a SATA drive out of another computer and just temporarily cabled it in. I looked up the mounting tray and drive price on ebay and it's over $100 for both. I think I paid $300 for the whole server. |
The Overlord rules the Universe. |
| Saturday, July 3rd, 2010 at 7:13:08 PM #46193 |
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Toasty SysOp Level 40 Posts: 7,388 Submissions: 227 | Quote: I would have had to spend time finding drivers for it. Only the USB hub driver's auto loaded. When I plugged my mouse into it, there was horrible lag. Makes me wonder if it was 2.0 compliant or still 1.0 standard.The USB speed shouldn't matter, the minuscule amount of data transferred would have no problem going over 1.0. If it is a ball mouse, clean it...But I doubt it is. Are you using it on a glass surface? Try using a mouse pad. If that doesn't help, or another mouse doesn't help, I'd look into the software a bit more. Quote: And thanks for letting me rant. I know nobody cares but it feels good to get it out. If I didn't care, I wouldn't open the topic. It's quite frequent there's topics which I can't contribute to, but not this one. CD/DVD thing -- Look for an external. I assume once the system is on the network (which it may be already?) You could just share the root of your CD drive on another system. Won't work for gaming or some installs, but you can copy things and occasionally install like that. Good news: Your server supports the 3Gbps interface... Or at least they sell drives for it. |
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| Saturday, July 3rd, 2010 at 11:13:52 PM #46205 |
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Overlord Member 'Supreme Ruler' Level 16 Posts: 1,068 Submissions: 19 | It must have been the drivers on that thing. The mouse would work and then stop and then work again and then drag. It was lame. We're all good now that I have the NIC running. Now I have to figure out what the amber lamp on the front is blinking for.... Quote: CD/DVD thing -- Look for an external. I assume once the system is on the network (which it may be already?) You could just share the root of your CD drive on another system. Won't work for gaming or some installs, but you can copy things and occasionally install like that.That is an excellent idea. Right now I have the case cover off and I skanked a drive from another machine. I used it to load the OS. However, I will take your advice and share another CD/DVD drive. I should be able to LightScribe if I mounted it, right? |
The Overlord rules the Universe. |
| Sunday, July 4th, 2010 at 12:07:46 AM #46213 |
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Toasty SysOp Level 40 Posts: 7,388 Submissions: 227 | I don't know how much burning functionality you're going to get out of it, if any. I've only used them to read discs. Quote: Now I have to figure out what the amber lamp on the front is blinking for....Put the case back together. On Dell servers, it means one of two things: Case Intrusion Detected (you should be able to disable this in the bios), or drive failure. I doubt the second one, since the Dell server I had used proprietary connectors and a RAID 5 setup with actual Dell drives, allowing some self-diagnostics. Since I don't believe you're using Dell drives, or any of them are failing (are you using RAID?), I don't think that would be it. The ones I had were Wide SCSI, not SATA like you're using (despite SATA having better SMART drive checking). |
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