Ramblings of Narc

I’ve detailed before, but not recently, the many computers I have around the house (I should probably post the current situation at some point). These computers have served me very well in the past couple of years, and I’m very proud of all of them (yes, even the 486).

Still, there comes a time when we all must start thinking of software updates. Now, for the single Windows computer left (the only one I want to keep, that is), and for the two Ubuntus, that’s a pretty simple task — updates come automatically, requiring very little interaction to keep them up to date. For the Linux From Scratch computers, however, that’s… a bit more difficult.

One of the LFS computers (named Bast) is my Web server (serving this website, yes), as well as my mail server (for everything @narc.ro). It’s done its job excellently so far, but I’ve been thinking of switching it to an Ubuntu Server edition. Bear in mind, though, that this computer is a 500 MHz Pentium III with 128 MB of RAM — it’s not going to do very much very well. But by keeping it free of a GUI, it’s behaved admirably so far. I suspect it should handle the Ubuntu Server install just fine. And the ease of having the apt package management system will be awesome.

And since stuff doesn’t get done until you sit down and just decide to get stuff done, I’m taking my own advice here and resolving to get this done this weekend.

As a result, this website may be down for a few hours this weekend while I play around with this (especially difficult since it will require plugging a keyboard and monitor into Bast, and babysitting the install; oh, and let’s not forget backing up beforehand). However, ideally, the result will be just as good, performance-wise, while also allowing me to finally move the DNS over from the old Windows Server, which is probably going to end up with an install of FreeNAS. Because I’m cheap and I don’t want to pay for Windows.