Power Saving - old hardware

Neuro · 2006-01-08 16:17:38

Here's the point:
I've got an old computer acting as:
- a firewall (my own iptables ruleset)
- a NAT router
- a file server: NFS + Samba
- a web server: internal/external, doesn't serve many things.

It's a:
- Pentium III 500 Katmai with a passive cooler
- Intel Corporation 440BX/ZX/DX Host bridge (rev 03) - some Intel noname motherboard
- 160 mb 100mhz SDRAM
- 2x NIC: 1x RTL8139D 1x 3com 3c905B
- Samsung SP1614N (160gb/7200rpm/8MB cache) disk drive.

I know I could have went with one of these sweet www.soekris.com boxes, but I can't really afford one. I haven't paid for anything except the case (with a 300W PSU) and the drive. Basically I run a find /room -type hardware and asked a few friends of mine for spare parts.

Well, the problem is that it's up 24h/7days a week. Judging from the setup it consumes a lot of energy (it's an old system with a huge PSU), thus I thought about optimizing it to save some watts.

I've already removed the Maxtor G200 card so it doesn't consume power at all.

Lately I've found the 2.6.15 kernel has the "Dynamic Tick Timer" (CONFIG_NO_IDLE_HZ) which allows the system to skip some cycles and save some power. Haven't compiled it yet, since I'm waiting for a grsec pathc for 2.6.15 to come out, but I'm really looking forward to it.

I doubt if my hardware has any power saving thingies like SpeedStep or has anything like Athlon/Duron Powersaving (even for old systems!). If anyone knows about something similar for old Intel CPUs, please give me a hint.

Additionally I investigated in the possibility of putting the drive to standby mode (spin-down) with hdparm -S 241 /dev/hda. Although theoretically it should spin down after 30 minutes, it doesn't. There's always some FS motion (like writing syslog files or updating my system monitoring rrd files). Anyone knows how much does a typical, modern (late last year) hdd consumes power?

I've toyed with the idea of moving the root filesystem (+etc/lib/sbin/bin/usr/var) to a USB pen drive (1GB would suffice, although I'd need a separate USB 2.0 card). It would require me to buy the USB pendrive (I've already got the USB 2.0 card). So does anyone know if the move is worth the money/effort? Wouldn't the USB controller + USB pendrive consume as much power as the active HDD (which would then be in a standby mode)?

Anyone has any suggestions on how I could trim my system's power usage? Maybe someone has an idea how to measure the real power usage of a system?

(after posting it I realised how long the post became thanks for anyone who had the patience to read it )

Kern · 2006-01-09 02:44:30

cant see a way to make a significant power saving internally as most stuff is comparitively low power anyways.
Maybe as you mentioned power supply.... as you probably have figured , its an offset against buying in gear to be low power against getting something for free and it consuming more.

some thoughts:
-if you have a monitor on the setup (hundreds of watts), turn it off, not standby.
-put a smaller PSU in, taking into account your minimum powersupply requirements. (maybe tens of watts)

regarding harddrive Power : (single figure watts)
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/per … wer-c.html

take a step back. It maybe that turning off one lightbulb in the house, or boiling less water in the kettle will make a more significant saving than anything you can do inside the PC.

save your hard earned Zloty on something else. PC's are essential, after all

Neuro · 2006-01-09 16:23:57

Kern wrote:

some thoughts:
-if you have a monitor on the setup (hundreds of watts), turn it off, not standby.
-put a smaller PSU in, taking into account your minimum powersupply requirements. (maybe tens of watts)

The machine is totally headless. I couldn't even fit a monitor in the wardrobe even if I had one I'm currently using a serial port console to check if everything goes right.

About the PSU thing. I'm having a hard time finding a power-saving one. All of the PSUs I've found so far strive for being either uber-powerfull or completely silent. Any thoughts were I could find one?

regarding harddrive Power : (single figure watts)
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/per … wer-c.html

That cleared up the issue, I think. While active/idle consumes around 11W (as opposed to 2W in spin-down mode), it's not that tragic I can live with that.

take a step back. It maybe that turning off one lightbulb in the house, or boiling less water in the kettle will make a more significant saving than anything you can do inside the PC.

I'm going to try the Dynamic tick time regardless. If I can save up some Watts, without paying a single zloty for it, why not?

save your hard earned Zloty on something else. PC's are essential, after all

Thanks for the hints. It's really nice to see someone recognize our national currency (or that we have our own currency at all ). It's not something you see every day. Cheers.

Kern · 2006-01-09 17:23:32

no probs, nice of you to feed back. let us know how the dynamic tick time thing goes.

just had a thought ....
see if you can find some old RAM modules to boost capacity.
if the entire thing ran from ram, like some Knoppix Live-CD variants, then you would hardly need the hard drive. maybe easier to start the distro from CD, load to ram and run.

maybe take a look at Archie or Knoppix, see if you could modify it to run on that h/ware.

see Knoppix Customisations and LiveCD for some dedicated server/security stuff. usually dedicated = low overhead. some may run inside the ram setup you already have without expansion.

phrakture · 2006-01-09 17:32:21

Neuro wrote:

Kern wrote:
save your hard earned Zloty on something else. PC's are essential, after all
Thanks for the hints. It's really nice to see someone recognize our national currency (or that we have our own currency at all ). It's not something you see every day. Cheers.

hah, I read that, and was like "poland? what?" so I scrolled up and checked - I was right... I thought Kern was making a joke.
+1 to me for recognizing it too!

Neuro · 2006-01-09 20:21:03

Kern wrote:

no probs, nice of you to feed back. let us know how the dynamic tick time thing goes.

Sure thing, but I'll wait till there is a grsec patch for 2.6.15 though.

just had a thought ....
see if you can find some old RAM modules to boost capacity.

AFAIK (I don't have the manual) these old mobos have small memory limits. Currently I'm running 160 MB RAM (64+64+32), but I doubt I could put more than 256 in it. It's a 440BX after all.

As for the live CD idea or a ram disk thingy... There are 2 cons:
1. I'm not sure I could put that much ram in there
2. I wouldn't trust a live cd/ram disk solution on a system which is meant to be stable. I'm not too fond of live cd's - don't know why, I just don't like them.

As for Knoppix/Archie.. well.. I'm fine with Slackware on it

phrakture wrote:

+1 to me for recognizing it too!

/me scores phrakture +1 recognition for 'Zloty' ;)

stavrosg · 2006-01-10 15:28:37

Neuro wrote:

Kern wrote:
just had a thought ....
see if you can find some old RAM modules to boost capacity.
AFAIK (I don't have the manual) these old mobos have small memory limits. Currently I'm running 160 MB RAM (64+64+32), but I doubt I could put more than 256 in it. It's a 440BX after all.

If you can find three 128MB sticks, you can end up with a whooping 384MB RAM in that box.
But these suckers are really hard to find (without paying them as golden, of course )

Neuro · 2006-01-10 15:42:56

stavrosg wrote:

If you can find three 128MB sticks, you can end up with a whooping 384MB RAM in that box.
But these suckers are really hard to find (without paying them as golden, of course )

It's not a problem of how much one can put on a single memory stick (I've seen SDRAM 100 256MB sticks for quite reasonable prices), but rather of how much RAM the mobo is able to handle. Judging from the manual of another 440BX mobo I've got, it's 256MB ram total.

stavrosg · 2006-01-10 17:08:00

I have a 440BX-based motherboard that works nicely with 2x128MB Ram sticks. I don't see why shouldn't handle a third.
I admit that I don't have a spare one to try though

loserMcloser · 2006-01-17 14:45:02

Neuro wrote:

Additionally I investigated in the possibility of putting the drive to standby mode (spin-down) with hdparm -S 241 /dev/hda. Although theoretically it should spin down after 30 minutes, it doesn't. There's always some FS motion (like writing syslog files or updating my system monitoring rrd files).

You can try reducing hard drive activity by adding the noatime option to /etc/fstab for all partitions.

Also, try moving /var/log into a tmpfs. Since RAM is at a premium, you can probably keep the size of the tmpfs to 16 or 32MB, or less depending on how aggressively you logrotate.

Here is an /etc/rc.d/tmpvarlog script (added to DAEMONS in rc.conf) that I use to keep /var/log in a tmpfs mounted on /tmp. Just move your current /var/log to /var/log_bkp.

#!/bin/bash

. /etc/rc.conf
. /etc/rc.d/functions

case "$1" in
  start)
    stat_busy "Setting Up /var/log"
    rm -f /var/log
    mkdir /tmp/var_log
    /usr/bin/rsync --archive --delete /var/log_bkp/ /tmp/var_log
    ln -s /tmp/var_log /var/log
    add_daemon tmpvarlog
    stat_done
    ;;
  stop)
    stat_busy "Saving /var/log To Disk"
    rm -f /var/log
    /usr/bin/rsync --archive --delete /tmp/var_log/ /var/log_bkp
    ln -s /var/log_bkp /var/log
    rm_daemon tmpvarlog
    stat_done
    ;;
  restart)
    $0 stop
    sleep 1
    $0 start
    ;;
  *)
    echo "usage: $0 {start|stop|restart}"
esac
exit 0

Neuro · 2006-01-17 17:41:55

loserMcloser wrote:

You can try reducing hard drive activity by adding the noatime option to /etc/fstab for all partitions.

I already do that on all partitions except /home.

Also, try moving /var/log into a tmpfs. Since RAM is at a premium, you can probably keep the size of the tmpfs to 16 or 32MB, or less depending on how aggressively you logrotate.

I don't know about you, but keeping logs in RAM isn't the best thing to do IMHO. I mean, the idea of having log is to be able to check what went wrong, thus they should be kept somewhere where even a system crash (power down, etc) won't mess them up.

I'm still waiting for grsec to check out the dynamic tick timer...

Jefg60 · 2006-01-17 17:52:15

it sounds like this may be outside of your budget / philosophy (which I like, I have a 450mhz katmai server myself!) but if you're looking for a more efficient psu, try silentmaxx. Some of their PSUs are designed to run without a fan, and they do this by being some of the most efficient PSUs around, because inefficiency generates heat, which of course is a bad thing for running fanless. Less heat generation should mean less energy consumed!

The downside is price they are not cheap. You might need to supplement case airflow with an extra fan too.

OT, some people are probably thinking why have a fanless psu and install extra fans. Thats not relevant to this topic, but I've done it, and my pc can barely be heard in the dead of night, when under no load, so there is method in my madness

loserMcloser · 2006-01-17 22:45:10

Neuro wrote:

I don't know about you, but keeping logs in RAM isn't the best thing to do IMHO. I mean, the idea of having log is to be able to check what went wrong, thus they should be kept somewhere where even a system crash (power down, etc) won't mess them up.

The machine I do this on is not critical in any sense -- it's just a 533 MHz mini-ITX box running as a home firewall/router + file/web server.

If it crashed once mysteriously, I probably wouldn't even bother to think about checking the logs.

If it was crashing mysteriously repeatedly, then I would temporarily stop putting the logs in RAM until I figured it out.

As a matter of fact, I don't think the machine has ever crashed (yay Arch!), so I'll take the lower hard drive activity over the (tiny, IMHO) risk of losing some log info.

Neuro · 2006-01-18 07:55:24

loserMcloser wrote:

As a matter of fact, I don't think the machine has ever crashed (yay Arch!), so I'll take the lower hard drive activity over the (tiny, IMHO) risk of losing some log info.

I guess it's a matter of priorities.

Arch Linux

#1 2006-01-08 16:17:38

Power Saving - old hardware

#2 2006-01-09 02:44:30

Re: Power Saving - old hardware

#3 2006-01-09 16:23:57

Re: Power Saving - old hardware

#4 2006-01-09 17:23:32

Re: Power Saving - old hardware

#5 2006-01-09 17:32:21

Re: Power Saving - old hardware

#6 2006-01-09 20:21:03

Re: Power Saving - old hardware

#7 2006-01-10 15:28:37

Re: Power Saving - old hardware

#8 2006-01-10 15:42:56

Re: Power Saving - old hardware

#9 2006-01-10 17:08:00

Re: Power Saving - old hardware

#10 2006-01-17 14:45:02

Re: Power Saving - old hardware

#11 2006-01-17 17:41:55

Re: Power Saving - old hardware

#12 2006-01-17 17:52:15

Re: Power Saving - old hardware

#13 2006-01-17 22:45:10

Re: Power Saving - old hardware

#14 2006-01-18 07:55:24

Re: Power Saving - old hardware

Board footer