finding cheap hardware for Linux?

[E Frank Ball]

} Any suggestions for good places to find inexpensive (used?) hardware for
} Linux?

Just check around the surplus stores (Haltex, HSC, etc).  Some of the
hole in the wall computer stores sell old used machines too.  There is
one down on Santa Rosa Ave and another on Rt 12 in Rincon Valley (NE
Santa Rosa).

} I'm planning to set up a Web server for testing/playing around, so it
} doesn't need
} to be the latest anything.  It's been a while since I've bought anything
} now, so I'm
} not sure where's the best place to look.  (quality? reliability?
} reputation?)
}
} Relatively low power consumption could be nice, since it's going to be an
} always-on
} system, but I haven't seen anyone advertising that. Maybe this will
} change...

I assume your talking about putting this on a DSL line or something like
that?  Just a data point about web servers on old hardware.  I was
running a 486/50 with RedHat and Apache on the intranet at work.  Trying
to run Netscape on it was pathetic, but Apache flat screamed.  A friend
got a new PC and was using my web server to show off how fast his PC ran
(the main web server for the county was much faster hardware, but very
busy).  Figure 16MB minimum, but 32MB would be nice.  386s aren't worth
the effort:  they never have enough ram and are so slow I've never had
the pactience to load a system on one.

I've also been looking around at small web servers.  cgi-bin scripts and
other things that execute code on a web server are big security holes.
I found several smaller webservers on freshmeat.net:  dhttpd, webfs, and
several at www.acme.com.  Most are not cgi-bin capable.  dhttpd won't
even index directories.  Some can't handle any but the simplist MIME
types.  Some of them can't do logging.  I've got six web servers running
on one machine so I can compare them all.

   E Frank Ball                efball at efball.com