I’ve finally got my new home server up and running. I chose a Falcon CR-51 as the base. It’s very low noise, and very low cost. The best thing is that it fits jammed up against the wall behind my desk. (photo to come soon).

All in all I am VERY impressed with gentoo. I’m a long time redhat user (6.0 onwards) and slackware before that (3.4-3.6), while it took a while (I’m on dialup still) the server is optimized and running perfectly. It’s like all the benefits of Debian without the really old versions of everything.

Next I have to get a webmail solution up and running. As the server will mostly be used as an enterprise java playground, I’d prefer it to be a java based one. I’m going to try jwma with gentoo’s jboss. Maybe I could even commit a jwma ebuild if it all goes according to plan.

Once my server is working perfectly I’ll be upgrading to cable be done with it.

In case you’re all wondering, the main reason I want a server at home is so I can use my mail. All my domains, and all their addresses fly into a single pop3 account. Unfortunately for me, the huge volume of spam I get makes this not a decent solution, as I can’t install a powerful mail client at work (proxied port 80 only). So I figure that I can move my mail onto an IMAP server, then whack a web client on top of it. From home I’ll use evolution, from work the website. One mail, all filtered.