Old laptop as server?

I'm looking to turn my old P3 laptop into a server for hosting my wordpress blog. Is this even possible?

Any help will be appreciated! =]

 

everything's possible. it may not be the fastest server, but it'll be one that won't consume that much power, and may even still have a working usv (depending on how many minutes your battery still lives ).

 

Battery is long dead. What kind of software do I need to run this? Do I need to buy a domain name as well?

 

to be able to access your webserver on your laptop you have to do several things:

get your laptop (os doesn't matter right now) a fixed ip.
do portforward on your router the tcp port 80 to your fixed ip of the laptop.
register on www.dyndns.org an adress in the form myserver.dyndns.org.
configure eighter your router to auto-update your routers ip to dyndns, or do it with an auto-updating tool on the laptop.

you can use any os you want. on linux, you most likely will configure an apache server (or wamp is another keyword to google for). on windows you may configure iis (if you have xp pro, of vista in certain versions). google up on how to do that.
or you could use apache on windows just as well.

 

For fixed ip, do you mean a static DHCP?

Thanks a a lot davepermen, shall try it maybe tonight!

 

static DHCP, or just enter the settings on the server itself (so it doesn't do DHCP at all).

both ways work (but i'd suggest doing it on the server, so the server will always have a valid (the same) ip, no mather what happens with the network surrounding it.


be aware that a lot of routers can't handle ip loopback, that means they can't allow you to access your server trough it's external adress (server.dyndns.org) from your local network to your local network.

that means it may look like it doesn't work. get a friend who is not in your network and let him try to connect to the server.

a helping sign for that problem is, when you try yourserver.dyndns.org, you get to your routers homepage (which normally means, it will directly ask for username and password). if that's the case, then you need to manipulate your hosts file on your local systems to directly map yourserver.dyndns.org to your local server ip (in my case, 192.168.1.3).

this won't be that much fun for notebooks, as they often switch from internal to external. i've written a tool that auto-updates the hosts file. have to change it a bit to be able to do this for other situations. it's basics is like this: you give it an external servername and an internal ip address (or server name?). if it can ping the internal address, it'll add it to the local hosts file. if it can't, it'll remove it again.

 

In terms of the OS you use, you'd probably be best off sticking with whatever the machine came with. Older laptops, in particular, can have a lot of problems with linux, generally due to muck-ups by the original manufacturer that were, shall we say, "smoothed over" under the original WindowsOS that came preinstalled.

If you want to try a linux installation, by all means, please do, after all, they tend to run lighter than a WinOS; however, do your research carefully first, and focus on trying to find out how many people have successfully installed a linux variant on your particular system, and what issues they had to deal with. I know that this can be a problem from personal experience - I tried to install a number of different linuxes on an old Compaq I had, but because Compaq had totally muffed the ACPI tables (which is rather ironic given that Compaq was one of the companies that pushed the promulgation of the original ACPI standard), I could never get a linux installation to play nice with the notebook's fans and ended up giving it up because I wanted to use it as a server (just like yourself) and could never get to the point where I could trust that the system wouldn't overheat if left by itself for too long.

 

I think first stay with whatever is on the system. so you can get a light server up and running and test out all the networking issues. Afterwards, after you first time successfully accessed your server from outside your network (and possibly from inside it with the external address), you can start messing up the os.

 

I've managed to dig out an old desktop, but it used to suffer from random crashes. So I ran a memtest86+ and found a stick of faulty ram.

Off topic, do Dell ram have lifetime warranty? This PC is 4 years old, running DDR2.

Second question, and more on topic, is 512mb of ram sufficient for this server setup? I'm installing Ubuntu desktop edition as we speak.

 

sure thing. more than enough.. if the os itself can give you some meg for the webserver, that's all you need (and ubuntu should with ease do that).

 

Alright thanks! I'm done with ubuntu, and its 1am over here. Gotta catch some sleep! I'd continue tomorrow.

Thanks for the help guys!

 

Also of note, hosting a website at home is most likely against the terms of service that you signed with your ISP.

 

Most Ram manufacturers do offer lfetime warranty though I don't know if it works that way if you have to go through the laptop manufacturer...

 

I agree with that

 

really? i'd hate that isp. i've bought the fully legal windows home server, which allows web access to my home network. are they allowed to cripple my product?

 

Ayle, I called Dell and they said since its not under warranty, they won't be replacing it. Guess I have to call Samsung directly?

nizzy1115, yeah I'm aware of that, but since I'm just playing around, they probably won't mind right? Its not like I'm hosting my company website or something big on it. My blog just gets around 50 visitors a day.

 

I wouldn't count on your ISP "not minding" - they might mind very much if your in-bound traffic is noticeable ("noticeable" being a very subjective term here, largely depending on how fine-grained their statistical analysis software is). I'd read my TOS very carefully were I you.

 

It depends a bit on where he lifes. here in switzerland that is not even in discussion. just do what ever you want, you get the given bandwidth and have to life with it.

 

Which is precisely why it's important to read the TOS, first, second, and last.