Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:56:34 -0700 From: Gary Kline <kline@thought.org> To: Chris Whitehouse <cwhiteh@onetel.com> Cc: FreeBSD Mailing List <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: general questions about 7.0 and computer efficiency...... Message-ID: <20080813205633.GB45712@thought.org> In-Reply-To: <48A21436.1060500@onetel.com> References: <20080805181926.GA24000@thought.org> <48A0CF70.4060903@onetel.com> <20080812010745.GA24824@thought.org> <48A21436.1060500@onetel.com>
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On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 11:52:38PM +0100, Chris Whitehouse wrote: > Gary Kline wrote: > >On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 12:46:56AM +0100, Chris Whitehouse wrote: > >>Hi Gary > >> > > Do you build your hardware from the tower case up? ---Green is > > "in" these days; so maybe some of us, or each of us, can > > contribute to a best-of list for those who are going to find a > > local builder or roll their own. First time I'll be in an "in" > > group :-) > > Yep, any old crap case found on the street will do. With a little care > building modern hardware is _really_ easy, it's very hard to mess up as > there is only a handful of parts and most things that plug into other > things can only do so one way and things that aren't supposed to plug > into each other mostly can't. Power supplies provide instant protection, > ie won't turn on when there is a problem. My computer has one each of > motherboard, hard drive, power supply, optical drive and cpu, plus 2 ram > modules and a few cables. > > The time consuming part is researching the parts. If you are building > servers you might have to dig even deeper, eg > http://www.worlds-fastest.com/d.pdf/wfw991.pdf > I have one firewall running pfSense. It stands guard between my modem and my internal server. I don't understand why the pfSense box has two NIC's and the mail/web/DNS has only one, but that's how my LAN guy reconfigured things. one thing I'm thinking of is to get One fast and lower-power server, having two jails. One jail would be as-is with mail/web/DNS and the other jail would be "tao", my main server for years. When I buy a reasonably fast ThinkPad, it could run Ubuntu and I could reconfigure my older boxen for emergencies. > > > > Not that bad if you've got only one box. My Ubuntu is a bear to > > reboot, sometimes, because the mouse goes nuts every other > > reboot. > > Do you mean it's not that bad that one computer uses 130 instead of 95. > I think that is critical to the problem. To think about climate change > you have to multiply your negligible contribution by the total number of > negligible contributions. Manufacturers are not interested in 'green' so > we have to do it for ourselves. They are finally waking up! Especially as their own costs skyrocket, and as the poor consumers {that's us} start yelping as our power bills hit the ceiling. It will be at least a few years though, so for now, yes, it's our responsibility. > I have to say it was a bit painful > spending £50 on an energy efficient power supply instead of £15 on a > standard one, but the other parts aren't any more expensive. > > I'll redo my measurements in the next couple of days. > > > > >>It's a good idea to turn computers off at the wall when not using them > >>not just shut them down. I was surprised to find mine uses about 25 > >>watts when shut down. Again the Dells at work use even more. The > >>corporate environment must waste so many megawatts... And of course these costs are passed along. Borne by not only the consumer but by the planet. .... > >> > >>For servers my workplace is heading towards fewer physical machines and > >>running virtual servers to implement their 'green ICT' policy. > >> > >>It's great to hear that someone else is thinking about the environmental > >>effects. > > > > > > > > I've been thinking about my footprint ever since talking to a > > friend up in Ottawa who was looking into building a hay-bail > > home. This is [tiny] green [/tiny]. Hay-bail insulation is > > [HUGE] Green [/HUGE]. I told him I was going to buy some land > > north of Nome and plant palm trees! > > I've just come back from the climate camp at Kingsnorth in UK :) > > Sorry getting OT again but I do think energy use is an issue that we > should be addressing and has to be addressed on an individual basis. The way I see it, since we {us-[BSD]-geeks} are among the most savvy folk on the planet, it's make sense for us to be in the lead on this type of issue. [volumes left unsaid] gary PS: just spent 20 minutes crawling around beneath desk. my bare-bones ubuntu draws between 100 -- 107w. isling. > > Chris > > > > > gary > > > > > >>Chris > >> > > > -- Gary Kline kline@thought.org http://www.thought.org Public Service Unix http://jottings.thought.org http://transfinite.thought.org
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