Any ideas?

[speadskater]

I am currently thinking about building a Linux Tower server. I'm looking into putting 2 Intel Xeon processors inside it (clock has yet to be determined) and am debating the amount of ram that I'll use. Here's where my roadblock comes in. What would be a good use of the processor power?

I was thinking of making a WoW private server, but I don't think my ISP (Comcast) would like that.

I'm just looking for ideas. My main reason for doing this is to gain more knowledge on how to set up server and keep it running.

[saj0577]

You tried something basic like a web server first?

Saj

[wootah]

folding@home ?

[bufsabre666]

start easy and move up, start with something really basic like a file server or a mail server, then try websever, then move up from there for a wow server or other advanced things

[speadskater]

You tried something basic like a web server first?

Saj

I manage my schools.

[_DD_]

So you want a server, but don't know what you're going to do with it?

Sounds about a silly as when I bought a Dell rackmount when I don't have a rack :p

Seriously, I've just been through the teenage phase of having my own server at home (its starting to be a trend that all teenage geeks go through when the other kids want a moped or something) and unless you have something important to host then its really not worth it.

Over the past 2 years I've set up 3 lamp servers and not used one of them. All now scrapped for parts or sold on ebay.

Even if you were to have something important to host you'd be far better off renting a dedicated in a proper datacentre where you would benefit from backups, redundency, good infrastructure, etc.

[hessiess]

you dont need a hugly powerfal masheen, Its unlickly your internet conection is actualy fast enugh to require that much power. I have a web server on my desktop that I use for learning PHP and outher web disign stuff, it is also hosting my portfolio. the computer runs just as fast as wen it wasent hosting anything.

[_DD_]

you dont need a hugly powerfal masheen, Its unlickly your internet conection is actualy fast enugh to require that much power. I have a web server on my desktop that I use for learning PHP and outher web disign stuff, it is also hosting my portfolio. the computer runs just as fast as wen it wasent hosting anything.

Yuh, I don't mean I don't use any kind of server (I run *AMP stacks on all my computers for PHP/MySQL dev) but I've given up on having a separate computer dedicated as a server.

If I ever need to host anything on the internet which for any reason I couldn't put on my remote hosting I can just open up port 80 on my router and I already have a domain pointing to my IP.

But spending on dedicated hardware just to tinker with is a plain waste of money. You can still learn server config/setup/maintenance on a sandbox linux install on an existing computer.

[zachtib]

throw on some kind of distributed computing, like SETI@home or Folding@home (there's an ubuntu group for folding)

That way, your unused clock cycles could go towards something useful :)