From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sat May 1 02:19:17 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2F80B106564A for ; Sat, 1 May 2010 02:19:16 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd@edvax.de) Received: from mx01.qsc.de (mx01.qsc.de [213.148.129.14]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AF9FF8FC15 for ; Sat, 1 May 2010 02:19:16 +0000 (UTC) Received: from r55.edvax.de (port-92-195-12-140.dynamic.qsc.de [92.195.12.140]) by mx01.qsc.de (Postfix) with ESMTP id E9A1C3DBA9; Sat, 1 May 2010 04:19:14 +0200 (CEST) Received: from r55.edvax.de (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by r55.edvax.de (8.14.2/8.14.2) with SMTP id o412JDaS002252; Sat, 1 May 2010 04:19:14 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from freebsd@edvax.de) Date: Sat, 1 May 2010 04:19:13 +0200 From: Polytropon To: Gary Kline Message-Id: <20100501041913.81a34394.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: <20100501015705.GA46858@thought.org> References: <20100501015705.GA46858@thought.org> Organization: EDVAX X-Mailer: Sylpheed 2.4.7 (GTK+ 2.12.1; i386-portbld-freebsd7.0) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: FreeBSD Mailing List Subject: Re: ziz a dumb question? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: Polytropon List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 01 May 2010 02:19:17 -0000 On Fri, 30 Apr 2010 18:57:08 -0700, Gary Kline wrote: > i've never been anything near the extreme-green movement. i > figured that newer computers/cpus/etc would be more efficient > than what came before. Oh, you mean that a "modern" desktop PC consumes as much power as my old AS/400e with 10 hard disk drives - as loud a a common PC, 2 times as big and 4 times as heavy? :-) > right now, everybody is > racing for efficiency. not here yet. I would say "racing for efficiency" will start if people do recognize that in many settings, networked terminals are a much better solution than one full-featured "modern" PC per desk. At the moment, industry is just trying to sell "energy efficiency" to those who are interested in it, but they get the same crap as anybody else, but more expensive. :-) > what i'm > wondering is:: how good is this "PC-BSD" at being a server? i > mean, if it's good at being a toy [to listen to A/V STreams and > other less-nerdy things], it probably can't be that solid on > handling DNS ... at least not as well as FreeBSD. Basically, it's still FreeBSD "under the hood", so you can run the basic services. Of course, you will have to install them in either of the "non-supported" ways (i. e. PBI packages usually won't be available for server-centered applications), via pkg_add or by ports. Because GUI operations vs. DNS workload won't be an issue in terms of resource consumption, you probably will be lucky. Serving web pages and maybe streams, and other "server stuff" will be possible, too. PC-BSD performs acceptably even under load. > If anybody > onlist has messed around with PC-BSD for *server* stuff, i'd be > very interested in hearing about it. In any case, check ports and firewall. PC-BSD intends to make the experience to the user as comfortable as possible. This, sadly, means to abandon well intended means of security. So there may (!) be something that makes your machine interesting for attackers - allthough you don't participate in 99.998% of market share. :-) I've tested PC-BSD on some occiassions, but I never really used it for anything that would allow me to call it a server, so I can't be more specific. -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...