[ILUG] Looking for a small, quiet server device.

[Rory Browne]

2008/8/7 Darragh <lists at digitaldarragh.com>

> Good morning.
>
> I'm very likely hoping for too much but I'm doing some work in an office
> that would really benefit from a small server.
>
> Requirements of this server are:
> Something about the size of a normal residential internet router.  AS quiet
> as one too.
> A distribution of Linux..... obviously.
> most importantly,  easily configurable to authenticate users on windows
> machines.
> some kind of mail server to pull in mail from a number of pop3 servers.
>  Squirrelmail for remote access would be nice but not escential.
> Another very important function is a proxy. Both for regulating usage and
> reporting.  Squid would be great.
> If at all possible, a method of attaching removable storage either via LAN
> or USB would really help.
>
> I know I'm asking for a lot but the people I'm doing this work for are not
> particularly technical.  However, their requirements are expanding as they
> take more staff on.  Their already paying out quite a lot for more desktops
> so I want to keep the price of this device reasonably low and one major
> factor is keeping the running cost down as well.
>

You should be able to put a Linux distro on a Linksys router. Some of them
AFAIK have usb ports that you could put a USB hard disk on to.

You do seem to be asking for quite a lot of functionality for such a small
box however, unless the office in question is quite small. This is even more
of a problem if their staff count is expanding.

I wouldn't normally recommend this, if you're really on a shoestring budget,
you might be better to dual-purpose one of the desktop machines. If they're
windows machines, you could use something like co-linux for this. Once again
though - only if you're on a shoe-string budget.