I have an ancient Thinkpad X200s with a cracked screen. For years it's been my favorite go-to home server running Linux + Docker. :P
Repurposing my old Chromebook to a low power home server
31–40 of 81 posts
Re: Repurposing my old Chromebook to a low power home server
#32My raspberry pi 4 has been running as a home server and gitlab runner under my tv stand for a few months now and works great! I just need to set up a backup scheme at some point since the whole thing runs on an sd card. It seems easier than ever to repurpose old hardware for home servers with docker and all the great projects out there!
My main gripe about the Raspberry Pi is the SD card unreliability. I know you can boot from USB now but I wish there was a way to integrate an SSD directly on the board (something in the m.2 2242 form.factor) to make it more resilient and also faster. I'll probably go with a small NUC or something like that instead, especially if there's some AMD Ryzen systems coming out in that form factor.
Yeah I agree about sd card reliability concerns. The funny thing is that I've used as cards as data storage inside gun launched munitions (Howitzers!) And they survived 10,000 G of acceleration, but too many writes is a problem!
I use a mounted usb drive for logging and storage so hopefully that helps the sd card stay fresh.
Re: Repurposing my old Chromebook to a low power home server
#33My raspberry pi 4 has been running as a home server and gitlab runner under my tv stand for a few months now and works great! I just need to set up a backup scheme at some point since the whole thing runs on an sd card. It seems easier than ever to repurpose old hardware for home servers with docker and all the great projects out there!
My main gripe about the Raspberry Pi is the SD card unreliability. I know you can boot from USB now but I wish there was a way to integrate an SSD directly on the board (something in the m.2 2242 form.factor) to make it more resilient and also faster. I'll probably go with a small NUC or something like that instead, especially if there's some AMD Ryzen systems coming out in that form factor.
> especially if there's some AMD Ryzen systems
The Asus PN50 with Ryzen 4000U series APUs is starting to become available in the US and other countries. Zen2, laptop chips. Tiny computers: 1.93" x 4.50" x 4.50" (or 4.9cm x 11.5cm x 11.5cm). I don't have experience with these, but they were on my list before I decided to go a little bigger and get the desktop APUs in the same series whenever they start shipping to the US.
Re: Repurposing my old Chromebook to a low power home server
#34I have an ancient Thinkpad X200s with a cracked screen. For years it's been my favorite go-to home server running Linux + Docker. :P
Seconding this. X200/210/220 are dirt cheap, come with modern CPUs, cooling fans (!), quality Ethernet ports and run x86-64 containers unmodified. You can cram 16GB of RAM and SATA SSDs into an X220.
Much less hassle and similar price to an RPi.
Re: Repurposing my old Chromebook to a low power home server
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I end up with old hardware that I don't want to fix or re-purpose, I tend to put it on an ebay auction for $0.99 + shipping (or whatever), and hope that someone else can get some additional life out of it.
Good idea, although I'm not wild about selling a Chromebook I can't access but previously had signed into my Google accounts to some stranger.
Can you use an external display? Some chromebooks have hdmi out, and you might be able to use adapters for others?
Re: Repurposing my old Chromebook to a low power home server
#36This list isn't so much repurposing a chromebook for a home server as setting up a complex work environment on a chromebook. I hope it doesn't discourage people from just running a simple webserver on their extra computers.
It's pretty much just 'apt-get install nginx' and a port forward on your router for ubuntu-flavors, isn't it? All that extra software setup for managing container and databases for monitoring and visually displaying logs, the extra software for dealing with the bandwidth that comes with containers, etc, doesn't have meaning or use in this context. He doesn't even actually mention which webserver he uses. It's all meta and no server.
Re: Repurposing my old Chromebook to a low power home server
#37My raspberry pi 4 has been running as a home server and gitlab runner under my tv stand for a few months now and works great! I just need to set up a backup scheme at some point since the whole thing runs on an sd card. It seems easier than ever to repurpose old hardware for home servers with docker and all the great projects out there!
My main gripe about the Raspberry Pi is the SD card unreliability. I know you can boot from USB now but I wish there was a way to integrate an SSD directly on the board (something in the m.2 2242 form.factor) to make it more resilient and also faster. I'll probably go with a small NUC or something like that instead, especially if there's some AMD Ryzen systems coming out in that form factor.
I seem to recall some one (Argon) has just launched a case for that Pi plus an m.2
Re: Repurposing my old Chromebook to a low power home server
#38I use a Lenovo M series Tiny for this. I have a fanless celeron unit running devuan.
ServeTheHome has been doing a ProjectMiniMicro on testing out different second hand ~1L sized mini-pcs. The series starts with a fairly unimpressive old Dell unit & some background. Matches a lot of what I've been doing at home. https://www.servethehome.com/introducing-project-tinyminimic... I do like the idea of getting a free battery back-up &built-in crash cart for my server. On the other hand, a lot of these mini…
I ran a thinkpad T61 as a server for a bit. It’s a decent solution and yes it has a built in UPS :)
Really these big clusters rarely need to be run 24/7 so it’s more economical to run one node doing stuff that has to be on all the time. Everything else I run in virtualbox on my desktop which is a fairly hefty Ryzen which gets turned off when I don’t need it.
I will replace my Lenovo M series with a VPS node when someone does one that Devuan works on.
Re: Repurposing my old Chromebook to a low power home server
#39I have an ancient Thinkpad X200s with a cracked screen. For years it's been my favorite go-to home server running Linux + Docker. :P
Seconding this. X200/210/220 are dirt cheap, come with modern CPUs, cooling fans (!), quality Ethernet ports and run x86-64 containers unmodified. You can cram 16GB of RAM and SATA SSDs into an X220. Much less hassle and similar price to an RPi.
Where the hell is a X200 is similarly priced to a RPi?!
In my neck o the woods(Austria) a X200 series is around 150-200 Euros. Add 16GB of Ram and an SSD an you're looking at at least 250 Euros instead of just 40 for a PI.
Re: Repurposing my old Chromebook to a low power home server
#40This list isn't so much repurposing a chromebook for a home server as setting up a complex work environment on a chromebook. I hope it doesn't discourage people from just running a simple webserver on their extra computers. It's pretty much just 'apt-get install nginx' and a port forward on your router for ubuntu-flavors, isn't it? All that extra software setup for managing container and databases for monitoring and…
Harsh but fair. If he had explained that he wanted to get more experience playing with Docker and other fancy toys then he could have won you over. Getting Docker to work on a 2Gb/16Gb Celeron Chromebook with a cheap USB stick is a fair technical challenge.
But you are right though. You can apt-get install nginx on Gallium to run many things. Fair use cases include an OwnCloud, a media server, a home security gizmo using the microphone and camera, a personal website and much else that could be done. It would be great to run these things and it be next to no power with a refurbished/recycled machine.
Or you could run Virtualbox to host another flavour of Linux so you can host Docker and use that to test your installation, no actual apps or real work done at all.