ATTACK OF THE LINT MONSTER (aka server maintenance)

After being up for about 6 months solid, I decided to take my homer fileserver down to clean it out and replace the stock CPU heatsyncs while I was at it. It was so nasty and dusty, I thought I'd post some pictures of the whole affair.

You can see in the pics a contrast shot between the stock HSF and the new Thermaltake TR2 M3's I replaced them with. I was afraid the new HSF's wouldn't fit, since the motherboard is so densely populated, and they seemed so much larger. Fortunately, the footprint was about the same, despite the larger surface area on the TR2's.

If anyone cares, the server:

AMD Athlon MP 2400+ (x2)
1gb PC2700
WDC WD800BB (x1)
Seagate ST3300822AS (x3) in 600GB Software RAID-5
CentOS Linux 5.1

Except for the RAID-5 and the chassis (donated by Fred), it was built from 100% scavenged parts!

 

Hehe, there's something satisfying about going through a system, cleaning it and making sure all is well

 

I once found a ball of dust that filled my hand in a computer that was manufactured somewhere around 1990

 

Once I had to repair a pc of a classmate. There was so much dust, that I couldn't even see the mobo anymore

 

i once went the fix a PC in a sweet factory, and the case was absolutely full of crap, no wonder it was poorly, the only symptom was: the floppy drive did not work, so, i removed the lid to make sure the CPU fan was spinnng, & found it was full of crap

i showed it to the manager & he said "Ohh, that's why the air in here has being so clear for the last month"

apparently, someone had mounted the fan the wrong way around

 

WOW, it looks like some one placed all that dust there, also, scavenged parts are the coolest.

 

out of interest, what else does this machine do to need two CPU's?

 

Not much really, it's a secure file server (SSH/SFTP/FISH for remote access, and NFS locally). Every once in a while I also use it as a dedicated game server, but most of the time both CPUs are idle. However, I didn't buy the 2nd CPU, it came with the mobo, so I won't complain.

 

If its on 24/7 and presumably storing all your music and dvd's then it would make a good mythTV back end (and don't forget torrentflux )

 

I'd say it's on 24/7, yeah. My electricity bill shows it, too! :chk: I was actually thinking about building a myth box, but honestly I have a cheapo little DivX player right now that even plays XviD, so I haven't been able to justify it yet.