-=> Nicholas Boel wrote to Tony Langdon <=-


 NB> There is still internal storage (albeit not very much) storage on those
 NB> things, isn't there? I haven't had the opportunity to look at Pi's or

No, storage is the (micro) SD card that you supply.

 NB> anything like them yet. I'm still running on 12+ year old hardware that
 NB> has only needed a few power supplies over the years. If I decide to
 NB> continue the hobby if/when sh!t hits the fan, I may indeed have to look
 NB> into something like this or a cheap hosting facility (free would be
 NB> better.. lol) in the future.

I went down the Pi route in the last year or two.  The main reason was they are
a capable and very power efficient system - good bang for the buck, both up
front and ongoing.  Traditional PCs simply cost too much to run.  I shut down
my last legacy "server" (an old P3) at the start of 2015, after it developed a
motherboard fault.  I migrated its data to a Mini-ITX board.  Next time, it
will end up on a Pi, as Pi binaries are available for the base system, and my
additions are either shell scripts or can be compiled from source (and are
known to run on the Pi).

 NB> I had a Gentoo setup for my BBS for years. When I originally set it up,
 NB> I followed the Gentoo install guide and set a 512mb swap partition,
 NB> which worked for many of those years. After awhile, dosemu (used for
 NB> old door games along with the processing of them all, including
 NB> networked games.. etc) would crash at random times. After noticing that
 NB> my swap partition was exceeded, I created a 2gb swapfile and all was
 NB> well after that.

Yes, I had done that in the past, created a swapfile on the fly when noticing I
needed more swap.  Swap partitions are more efficient (less layers of
filesystem to go through), but obviously less flexible.

 NB> So when I eventually switched to Archlinux, I didn't even bother with
 NB> the swap partition, and went with a 2gb swapfile and haven't had a
 NB> problem with it since. It was about that time I realized I didn't
 NB> really need any other partitioning, since it was my only Linux system
 NB> and I wasn't going to be moving partitions around besides simple
 NB> backups that could be achieved with a bash script and scp'ing it to
 NB> another machine.

Yes.  I think that works pretty well for most installations.  I still encounter
a bit of old hardware so the separate /boot is a good precaution, in case I
strike a BIOS with a disk too large for it to support.  Wouldn't be the first
time I've fixed someone's system that was crippled by an "ancient" problem that
most people no longer remember. :)

A separate /home is worth considering, in some circumstances.  That one has to
be weighed up on its merits.  Certainly if you have a lot of users, it would
prevent the dreaded "disk full". :)  For single user systems, it depends how
likely you are to either move your data between servers, upgrade the OS or
consider migrating /home to a NAS.  If any of those are likely, having /home
separate would be a good idea.

 NB>> ... "There is a very fine line between 'hobby' and 'mental
 NB>> illness.'"

 TL> LOL

 NB> Truth. :)

Indeed. :)

 NB> Regards,
 NB> Nick

 NB> ... "I don't suffer from insanity; I enjoy every minute of it."

:-)
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