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What started out approximately a decade and a half ago as an experiment to learn how to set up a Linux-based web server is finally at an end. The son-of-son-of-junkbox-web-server is being retired. This has been on my "to do" list for months, but the final impetus is an extended outage on my backup DSL line, over which the server is hosted. The entire virtual disk for the VM is currently being copied over to my home file server, after which the system hosting the VM will be shut down and the content of the various sites (including justbrewit.net) re-hosted on a VPS.

It's been an interesting ride.

The original server was a K6-III+. After that system died (a victim of the early aughts capacitor plague), the site was hosted for a few years on a hastily cobbled-together 1GHz Socket A Athlon box. When that system bit the dust, it moved to a VirtualBox VM hosted on a Phenom 9550, which is the system being retired today.

I'll definitely appreciate the peace and quiet; it has been the noisiest system in my office for a few years now. Before deciding to retire it, I had planned to deal with the noise by moving it to the crawlspace, next to the file server. That project never made it to the top of the priority list, as it would've involved digging it out of the corner where it has been buried behind piles of stuff for the past several years. (It's a headless box, administered "remotely" even though it is literally less than 10 feet from my desk, and I can power cycle it when necessary by yanking the power cord that snakes around the perimeter of the room to the corner where it lives.)

497 days since last reboot, as of today. The CPU even survived a CPU fan failure (and resulting 100C core temperature!) a number of years back. What a trooper.

(As an aside, ever since that 100C CPU incident, I don't trust the motherboard throttling/shutdown mechanisms and run a custom temperature monitoring script on all of my Linux-based desktop and server PCs. If core temp exceeds 65C the script powers the system down. If my cooling solution can't keep it below 60C under full load, something's wrong... so 65C is a good cutoff.)

Edit: As of 9:00 AM, it is powered down. The loudest thing I can hear from my desk now is the humming of the furnace and the air filter in the adjacent room.

Edit 2: Corrected some typos and errors. 9550 was a Phenom (not Phenom II), damnit!

A literal moment of silence for your heroic server and its 497 day uptime. O7

On a related note, silence is something worth investing in. I've now got two secondhand SFF workstations with a bunch of 2.5" drives. Each are silent enough to sit in the living room, and they're far quieter than a single idling 3.5" drive--after experiencing this I don't think I could go back to the standard din of a rackmount or DIY PC. The dollar:noise:size:power ratios of workstation prebuilts are worth considering for your next itch

Gentlemen, raise a glass of your preferred.

Raising a glass of good ole pappy van winkle to the awesome up-time of off the shelf parts.

I'll post some pics of the dust accumulation inside the system when I finally get around to digging it out of the corner; IIRC it is in a '90s era beige mid-tower which is missing some or all of its drive bay covers. Should be impressively nasty inside by now.

I believe there's also a small (500VA-ish) UPS with it which may still be of some use if I replace the battery. I guess we haven't had any power outages/glitches of significant duration recently, as I'm sure the runtime of that thing is measured in mere seconds by now.

It's pretty typical for my homebrew servers to get buried like this. Once I get the hardware checked out to where I'm confident they're reliable enough to be maintained without physical access, they get put somewhere "out of the way", and stuff accumulates around, in front, and (sometimes) even on top of them. My previous file server build is still sitting powered down in the exact same spot in the crawlspace it occupied when it was in use. All of the data was pulled off over the network, the new(er) server is sitting in front of it, and none of the hardware in the old server is recent enough to be fit for anything other than Starfalcon's collection (heck, even the "new" file server's hardware is probably bordering on Starfalcon fodder), so there's little incentive to bother doing anything with it.

Dposcorp wrote:

Raising a glass of good ole pappy van winkle to the awesome up-time of off the shelf parts.

Bulleit Rye here. Never had it before, picked it up on a whim. Very nice. Just a touch tannic/astringent on the finish, but not offensively so, and the rest of the package makes up for it.

With a Brickstone APA chaser once I was done sipping, FWIW.

After a moment of respectful silence, I raise a Jameson salute to the dedicated endurance of a grand ol" gal, may She rest in well deserved Peace...

I'll hold a glass of Dogfish Head 120 Minute to that. My kit car fired up today for the first time, so I have reason to break it open and share the glory.

just brew it! wrote:

Bulleit Rye here. Never had it before, picked it up on a whim. Very nice. Just a touch tannic/astringent on the finish, but not offensively so, and the rest of the package makes up for it.

With a Brickstone APA chaser once I was done sipping, FWIW.

Raising a Kentucky Mule made with Bulleit Rye. (Mules are always better with Rye)

Waco wrote:

I'll hold a glass of Dogfish Head 120 Minute to that. My kit car fired up today for the first time, so I have reason to break it open and share the glory.

I haven't had the 120 yet, but Dogfish 90 is good stuff also. I'll crack one open later tonight.

At work, so a can of Dew will have to suffice, but here's an o7 to your old workhorse.

I'm in a similar situation, as my old FreeNAS box has been having fits lately and refuses to stay up for more than a day or so. It's currently being (slowly) copied to a new mini-ITX system inside a Cooler Master Elite 120 case with 4x4 TB hard drives.

Redocbew wrote:

I haven't had the 120 yet, but Dogfish 90 is good stuff also. I'll crack one open later tonight.

I prefer the 90; I think it is a more balanced beer than the 60 or 120. In spite of the insane amount of hops used, there's so much malt in the 120 that it ends up a little too sweet and syrupy for my tastes.

I predict this webserver will Ryze again and ThreadRip its way into destiny!

The 120 is great after about 5 years, it takes off a lot of the heat and sweetness, but I look at it as more of a barleywine than an IPA. But there are definitely better for the price.

just brew it! wrote:

Redocbew wrote:

I haven't had the 120 yet, but Dogfish 90 is good stuff also. I'll crack one open later tonight.

I prefer the 90; I think it is a more balanced beer than the 60 or 120. In spite of the insane amount of hops used, there's so much malt in the 120 that it ends up a little too sweet and syrupy for my tastes.

Agreed, actually. It's just a nice change from a standard IPA and I found a few bottles at the local grocery. The 90 is the sweet spot, the 120 definitely has a bit of sweetness and you really can taste the alcohol content.

Do you guys ever drink, as opposed to eat, your beer?

Glorious wrote:

Do you guys ever drink, as opposed to eat, your beer?

I have some Negra Modelo right now, I think that should count? Nice dark lager, a squeeze of lime... great in the summer, and the lime prevents scurvy! I also have some Otra Vez, another great summer brew.

Ethyriel wrote:

Glorious wrote:

Do you guys ever drink, as opposed to eat, your beer?

I have some Negra Modelo right now, I think that should count? Nice dark lager, a squeeze of lime... great in the summer, and the lime prevents scurvy! I also have some Otra Vez, another great summer brew.

Definitely counts. It's dark in color, but still relatively light in body.

Also, the recently discussed Founders All Day IPA is under 5% ABV. My current "go to" (Two Brothers Pinball) comes in at 5.4%. They're both fairly light bodied - no chewing required.

just brew it! wrote:

Also, the recently discussed Founders All Day IPA is under 5% ABV. My current "go to" (Two Brothers Pinball) comes in at 5.4%. They're both fairly light bodied - no chewing required.

Not even I could handle Heady Topper on a nightly basis. The All Day gives me the flavor I want without the gut punch of 8% ABV and 120 IBUs.

Captain Ned wrote:

Not even I could handle Heady Topper on a nightly basis. The All Day gives me the flavor I want without the gut punch of 8% ABV and 120 IBUs.

Indeed. If I want to get anything useful done in the evening I need to lay off the high octane stuff or all I want to do is snooze. I think my tolerance started to drop a bit as I entered my 5th decade.