Small heads up on an ongoing HP promotion that ends end of this month (or will it?).
It has a 1.3GHz dual core processor (AMD Athlon II Model NEO N36L (2 core, 1.30 GHz, 1MB L2, 15W), 1GB DDR3 memory, 250GB SATA, 4 SATA drive bays, is mostly silent and with one drive installed power consumption around 30 Watts.
An interesting forum thread with pics.
Currently costs £140 VAT inclusive + delivered including receiving £100 cashback and purchasing direct from HP's own online shop. QuidCo applies on HP shop purchases.
FWIW I think that's storming value for such an energy efficient beastie. Won't be a gamer's machine or virtualisation champion though, and needs an OS installing. Linux ideal.
Mine's growing to become a kickin' Debian squeezebox server :-)
I'm umming and ahhing about building a NAS box and this looks ideal, except I'm not really ready yet...
This doesn't come with a graphics card, right? So I have to buy and install one? I don't need soopah performance - just marks on a screen so I can install it ... Once I can get to it over a network, it'll likely never get logged onto ever again.
(I'm a Sun geek by history - this PC stuff is all new to me)
I have a Western Digital My Book World Edition II NAS, it has 2Tb of storage and has a proper Linux OS with ssh access to it. In addition there is a software repository for it and so you can add/update software packages as required (see
formatting link
power consumption is around 6 watts when idle, peaking at 12 watts when busy, that's hard to beat with any sort of home build unless you go for really tiny stuff and then it's difficult to house etc.
I'm not sure what the best approach is if you have to suffer Windows - for any of the unix-a-like OSes I'd just use a text console and hook a laptop up to it for the rare times it needed admin and access over the network wasn't available, though.
Hell, no. This'll be getting FreeNAS or possibly OpenSolaris with ZFS installed on it. No Windows in this house. (Well, there is, but not when I have a choice.)
That was kinda what I was thinking. Except a lot of boxes come without serial ports these days, don't they?
unless the thing simply wont boot to multiuser, telnet gets you in to any *nix system.
If it really is borked, hook up a keyboards and screen to the minimalist onboard graphics.
In the last 10 years of doing this, it was only when the boot disk started to get flaky, that I have had to resort to a boot screen.
And since that was severe hardware problems, an open case could have just as easily popped a graphics card in.
Not that I am sure that a PC board will boot without SOME form of graphics at all.. I've never tried. All the M/Bs I have used have had crappy onboard intel chipsets..enough to boot the thing, anyway..
I am always amused by people who insist on ssh..which was designed because someone got fed up with his packets being sniffed on a campus network before switches were invented.
Or firewalls were even thought of.
It may have a place if you have WiFi, and unencrypted and unauthenicated, which is similar to an ethernet hub in its general promiscuity, but if you are that dumb, you deserve to be hacked.
You know here my servers are. Try telnetting into any of them.
Indeed... but I suspect[1] that it at least has a free USB port or two, so a USB-RS232 widget should work. I'd much rather have some Real Ports on a machine, of course, but I seem to be in a minority these days :-) (I don't think you can connect USB ports together between two PCs and communicate between them, can you? In the modern world that'd be the cleanest way of doing it, but I don't think USB works like that)
As you say, admin via network would work for just about all situations, anyway.
For giggles I suppose in an emergency you could hook up a USB keyboard for input and have console output directed to a USB printer ;)
[1] I looked at the promo page via the link that the OP quoted, but I gave up trying to find specs on the machine itself - I couldn't see a link to them on the promo page, and I didn't see an easy way of matching the quoted part code to an actual system. I was probably missing something obvious :-)
Why? I run no open network where I can be packet sniffed. I have a firewall that utterly precludes telnet coming into my network?
my sessions are entirely over a switch that cant be sniffed except by the two endpoints and doesn't propagate to with encrypted wifi that is only on when guesd require supervised access..
ssh is an expensive CPU overhead protocol solution to a problem that I dont actually have...and in fact almost no one tehse days DOES have.
There is a mystique that it makes you 'more secure' In most peoples networks, it does nothing of the sort. At the level it protects, you already are secure. The vulnerabilities lie elsewhere and using ssh is counter productive if it distracts from the real problems. Which are more likely to be the machine you initiate the session from being compromised. If you password is known, then ssh encrypting it can be done by anyone.
Is there a chubb lock and an alarm on your toilet?
On the basis that if they have already bypassed/smashed/picked the chubb lock on the front door, the one on the toilet door represents a problem? and when the key to it is in the key cupboard just inside the broken open back door?
If you can break into my network because I tell you there a telnetd on the server, be my guest.
Its because I spent many years implementing secure networks (amongst other things) that I cant be BOTHERED to use ssh, because I actually know how to break into networks, and how to protect against it.
Te last time I had need of ssh was back in about 1993, when we ran a hubbed ethernet network with coax cables. One of the technical support guys spent a fortnight and presented me with every single name and password. It had taken him two weeks and many gigabytes of disk to store all the logs. And reasssemble the hand keyed packets
I told him I had them all anyway thanks, because they were issued by me. And he could have saved himself the bother and simply stolen the key to the filing cabinet.
And we needed to put in cat 5 and switches anyway...so his 'work' was a bit wasted.
If smart asses spent a little less time analysing *theoreitcal* risks and a bit more time worrying about practical and simple real risks, the IT world would be a more secure place.
Example 1. Brand new firewall with VPN encryption installed to secure corporate network. Support call 'I cant get to the office email from hoe' 'you are not supposed to: see your line manager' Later on 'oh its all right, I've installed a modem connected to my direct telephone line and PCANYWHERE and now I can see the whole office at home just like I was sitting at my desk, so close the ticket'. I gave him 30 seconds to disconnect it before I DID call the managing director.
Eaxmple 2. Similar situation, but guy wants to work on spreadsheet at home. "Oh its OK I have downloaded the *complete corporate database* onto my laptop, so I don't need to get into work from home any more".
Anyone who leaves an employee with a writeable disk drive to removable media, and doesn't make laptops and USB sticks a sackable offence, doesn't care about their security. Only about the illusion of it. So with ssh.
Why, they're no worse or better than any other manufacturer, they all have bad patches. FWIW it has been running in my garage continuously for 18 months or so now without a hiccough.
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