Some time back, ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darthgeek gave me a spare 1U rackmount P4 box. I used it for a while as a Gentoo Linux sandbox, but recently started work on setting it up as a new firewall to replace the aging Sun Ultra5 that's currently doing the job. The 1U box is faster, has more memory, draws less power, and fits into the rack. I got as far as installing the OS, configuring the firewall, doing a single test cutover, finding it wasn't ready for service yet, and cutting back over to the old firewall, then got up the next morning to find out that its boot disk had failed.
So, I ordered a 4GB CF card and a CF-to-IDE adapter ... only to realize, a week later when they finally arrived, that the CF-IDE card had the wrong connector gender. It was designed to plug directly into the motherboard header, vertically. That's not going to fly, in a 1U case. So I ordered another, different CF-IDE adapter, which arrived two days ago.
I reinstalled the OS, decided I didn't like several things about how I'd chosen to install it. burned it down and started over, and had it ready to test by this morning. Cut over, swapped cables, and found that one of the Ethernet NICs wasn't responding.
The machine has four 10/100 Ethernet ports, two on the motherboard, two on a PCI card. I was only using three, so I reconfigured to switch the other connection to the unised port ... only to discover THAT one wasn't responding, either.
So I sighed, and swapped out the PCI card, an Intel dual EEPro/100 card, for another, different series Intel dual EEPro/100 card. Not only did both ports on this one work, but now the formerly not-responding port on the motherboard started working again, too, although now the ports were mapping in a different order. Go figure.
A second test cut-over, a moment of "Oops!" as I realized I'd set the wrong gateway address (memo to self: Point the default route to the router on the other end of the uplink, not the NIC on this end...), and everything looked good. Shut down the old firewall, bring up dhcpd, and ... gee, all in business.
My entire network infrastructure, except for the WAP and the cable modem, now occupies 10U of rack space ... and that includes the main UPS and the patch panel.
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While looking for a SATA controller for the Ultra 5, I was unable to locate any supported PCI cards that were still in production. (A likely indicator of continued support.) I have a pair of cheap cards, but neither worked. I tried them both in the 1U system (an Intel 810e MB with a 1GHz processor), I was able to configure the drive and build the kernel, but it gave errors writing data, and it always hung on the boot. (Loading the driver for the SATA card, of course. It was already booting from the drive, why would it hang later?)
A high end card could be an option in a month or so, I am not sure I want to spend the money. The system will never handle more than 512 MB RAM, and a USB drive is a good option. I do have some IDE <=> SATA converters, but they will never fit in a 1U system. (They seemed to work with the cover off, but I never investigated completely.)
I finally stopped trying due to lack of available funds to throw at a new system. I suspect that a high end card would have worked, I just needed to do more research on that track. I am working on getting the GUI working on the system now. Silly little things that I miss, and it is not really a high priority on a server that sits in the rack in the basement.