OK...another change for the web server...

When I was still racing mountain bikes in the mid 90s, the term that comes to mind was "retro-grouch"...

I was being a retro-grouch myself when I was trying to force the issue of using an old 486 (also from the mid 90s) as a web server, largely because I could. When that didn't work, I decided to use a Pentium 1 instead (likely from the mid to late 90s).

And I DID get that to work, but...

I started thinking about something I read about Freesco. One of the limitations of it was that there was no way that it'd ever take a gigabit ethernet card. This may not be an extreme problem for the time being, but it could be in the future (especially if I used the 486, since I couldn't even find a 10/100Mbps card for an ISA bus - I'd have to stick with a 10Mbps card). The other limitation that was standing out was the version of the Linux kernel it uses. It was so old that even it'd only run the first version of the Apache web server.

These things stuck in my head, and I started reasoning things this way...

1) I would like a more up to date version of Apache web server running.
2) I just installed Absolute Linux on a spare PC. Why couldn't I run something Slackware based to run the web server?
3) The PC I just got from my Freecycle list was already running Ubuntu. Why not just run Ubuntu instead of Slackware or Freesco and make my life simpler for the time being.
4) I can always go back and play with Slackware later.
5) I'm getting about three old Pentium III grade computers from someone else on my Freecycle list tomorrow. Why not build the web server from that?

So with that reasoning, I took the wife and kids to my favorite electronics store (also known as the Happiest Place on Earth - sorry Walt, not THAT place) and picked up another gigabit ethernet card and three Cat-6 cables to start the infrastructure of Mater Dei Television's future connection. I almost bought a gigabit router, too, but the salesman talked me out of it, saying that we'll get "bottlenecked at our ISP". He has no idea I intend on running this on a T1, perhaps even in the short term, and a much thicker pipeline in the longer term.

Keep praying. We're close!

Stay Tuned...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI