ziz a dumb question?

Gary Kline kline at thought.org
Sat May 1 03:03:59 UTC 2010


On Sat, May 01, 2010 at 04:19:13AM +0200, Polytropon wrote:
> On Fri, 30 Apr 2010 18:57:08 -0700, Gary Kline <kline at thought.org> wrote:
> > i've never been anything near the extreme-green movement.  i
> > figured that newer computers/cpus/etc would be more efficient
> > than what came before. 
> 
> Oh, you mean that a "modern" desktop PC consumes as much power
> as my old AS/400e with 10 hard disk drives - as loud a a common
> PC, 2 times as big and 4 times as heavy? :-)
> 

	Yeah, gee-whiz :)

> 
> 
> > right now, everybody is
> > racing for efficiency.  not here yet.
> 
> I would say "racing for efficiency" will start if people do
> recognize that in many settings, networked terminals are a
> much better solution than one full-featured "modern" PC per
> desk. At the moment, industry is just trying to sell "energy
> efficiency" to those who are interested in it, but they get
> the same crap as anybody else, but more expensive. :-)
> 


	i've thought about this for at Least ten years.... why not
	have 4 CRT's or xterminals hanging off one very beefy
	machine?  but do they have anything with graphics and
	keyboard + mouse that can work via one USB port/jack?  i'm
	sure my wasted cycles could be put to very good use.  but it 
	would mean haning off a second display/kybd/mouse.  

	the ARM/A-9 chip looks great.  its a RISC chip that is super
	efficient.  gang four A9's in one package:: low power and at
	least 2GHZ ....  the only drawback is that the a9 is only
	32bits.  So we cannot try to calcale the 7th root of
	infinity, :-)  i mean, come-on-people, get real.  4G of ram
	ought to be Plenty!!  
> 
> 
> > what i'm
> > wondering is:: how good is this "PC-BSD" at being a server?  i
> > mean, if it's good at being a toy [to listen to A/V STreams and
> > other less-nerdy things], it probably can't be that solid on
> > handling DNS ... at least not as well as FreeBSD. 
> 
> Basically, it's still FreeBSD "under the hood", so you can
> run the basic services. Of course, you will have to install
> them in either of the "non-supported" ways (i. e. PBI packages
> usually won't be available for server-centered applications),
> via pkg_add or by ports.
> 
> Because GUI operations vs. DNS workload won't be an issue
> in terms of resource consumption, you probably will be lucky.
> Serving web pages and maybe streams, and other "server stuff"
> will be possible, too. PC-BSD performs acceptably even under
> load.
> 


	i'm trying to// or i'm =thinking about= getting rid of my
	pfSense machine.  i used ifp for *yesrs* with no breakins.
	So NOBODY got into my poetry!!


> 
> 
> > If anybody
> > onlist has messed around with PC-BSD for *server* stuff, i'd be
> > very interested in hearing about it.
> 
> In any case, check ports and firewall. PC-BSD intends to make
> the experience to the user as comfortable as possible. This,
> sadly, means to abandon well intended means of security. So
> there may (!) be something that makes your machine interesting
> for attackers - allthough you don't participate in 99.998% of
> market share. :-)


	according to my /var/log/<foo>.log files, the only crackins
	were from kiddie-scripters.  i squashed them.   
> 
> I've tested PC-BSD on some occiassions, but I never really
> used it for anything that would allow me to call it a server,
> so I can't be more specific.
> 
> 

	thanks for your POV.  any others?  it may be that using
	PC-BSD would mean that pfSense would be wise.  i'm just tired
	of having to use Linux for fun stuff, and it frequently
	breaks, and relying on FreeBSD too.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Polytropon
> Magdeburg, Germany
> Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
> Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...

-- 
 Gary Kline  kline at thought.org  http://www.thought.org  Public Service Unix
    The 7.83a release of Jottings: http://jottings.thought.org/index.php
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