Welcome to the Hardware page. This is designed to give you a brief overview of what I have running, server and desktop wise. It is also a point of contact for FAQ's about this site.

Betty - Ubuntu 7.04 Server

The main site is running off of an old Compaq 5500 server otherwise known as Betty, (quad 550MHZ processor with 1mb cache and 1.5GB ram), she is an old and very noisy beast. For that reason she has been relegated to the garage, (you can still hear her from outside the garage and in the kitchen!).

She is running Ubuntu 7.04 Server edition. This was my first experience of a server OS and has been an interesting learning curve. This has been going since, what must be, June or so 2005! Betty has a number of 'main' Processes including:

• Firewall
• DHCP and DNS server for my local network
• Web Server (PHP included)
• Database Manager (MySQL)
• Data Storage (I run all my music and films from here)
• Network Video Server (I have a network KISS DVD player that looks at the server and streams files across and plays it onto the TV)

There are a number of subdomains running on this server as well as some other sites.

Brian - Windows 2003 Server

I also have a windows 2003 Server runnning within the local area network. I use a proxypassreverse technique which allows me to pass the content on the windows server out and make it appear as it is on the linux server. This has the great effect of looking like one site. I use this server as a way of learning how to use the windows environment a little more, I have started to develop ASP.NET applications and more are to follow.

Desktop OS's

I recently moved from windows XP to Ubuntu 7.04 for my desktop, although I still dual boot to windows so I can play some games occasionally and to use Adobe Photoshop I am loving the change and only really use Windows on a regular basis at work, (unless I am developing windows programs at the time). The only other use I have found so far is web site testing. I can test Firefox, IE6+7, Opera and Safari in one place to ensure my sites are running ok.

The boys computers still run off of XP as they like to play games and I am not ready to start playing with WINE lots to make sure I can play all their games as they want them.

Hardware FAQ

1. Betty = Betty?
   • Q) Why is your Compaq server called 'Betty'?
   • A) Betty (sorry if you or someone you know is called Betty), seems to ring with the name a child may use "Big Betty"... and she certainly is big, and not the sexiest computer I have ever seen!
2. Windows and Linux websites working together?
   • Q) How do you get windows and linux to appear in the same website?
   • A) I use a technique in Apache called ProxyPassReverse to make it seem like all the information from the ASP.NET site is coming from the linux server.