On Sun, Nov 27, 2022 at 09:37:19AM +0000, James Johnson wrote: > Hi all, > > OpenBSD is amazing. But I need help in configuring it correctly as a > remote server, rarely used. > > > The main thing I am trying to do is to make it sleep every now and > then to protect resources. I am very flexible on how to do this, but > have been unable to do so. > Here's what I tried : [...]
So to sum up your requirements, you want a self driving box which waits, and once every month or six wakes up, does something, then goes idle again. I would avoid power down/up completely - boot takes time, and fsck takes some more time. Also, AFAIK electronics wears down every time it goes on-off. Modern HDD are said to live to 50000 on-off cycles, so assume 20000 cold boots. But random things can happen, because on-off means power spike. If you have no problem with eletricity, I would keep it going all the time. I would however minimise writes. Work on temporary data in ramdisk, write results to disk. Something like this. BIOS battery goes down faster when computer is powered down. When it is up, clock gets power from the wall and saves the battery. I assume the modern CMOS battery will only keep the clock for about a year without power and it will not recharge when you power up. After that time (and before that time, too, but less necessary), every boot should include query to time server and adjusting the hardware clock. I would buy a decent PSU. Last time I wanted to know, Seasonic was the maker of best ones a mortal could buy. Their last unit I bought came with 10 years warranty. AND, according to description, it was built with classic electronic art, analog parts, no digital. So if you are so inclined, you can ask your electronic buddy to inspect it and perhaps even replace some parts with better ones. Or repair it. If microcontroller goes bunk, you are out of luck, I assume they somehow protect their eproms. If you plan to store some long term data on this box, I would avoid SSD. They are fast but they also can go bunk and when they do, chance of recovering data is close to nil (from what I have read). I would consider putting the box in a plastic bag to protect from dust and humidity. Dust will clog into radiators, make chips go hotter, ventillators work harder. I have not tested this, however. I assume thermal exchange with loose bag over the box should go ok, but you need to test it very carefully, monitoring temps all the time - all temps. HTH -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
