Anyone else use their crappy old laptops to host servers? lol

rockhandle@lemmy.world to Selfhosted@lemmy.world – 193 points –
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i disaseemble all my laptops so they are just a motherboard, screw them into sheets of MDF, place vertically, and use them as servers.

NAS, pihole, plex, etc

You have a tutorial? That sounds awesome.

This article talks about turning a laptop into a rack mounted computer. Each computer will be different recreating something like this based off what ports it has and where.

Do you do a headless install like Ubuntu Server Preseed?

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Cobbler/Preseed

Or do you install linux on an SSD from a different machine, then plug it into MDF mounted laptop mobo?

I would guess by plugging external peripherals to the motherboard.

I'm talking about the LCD/monitor. Maybe @penguin_knight keeps the LCD and mounts it to the board as well. If not, it's headless. Mouse and keyboard are not the issue. I always set up raspberry pi headless because the OS allows it. All you have to do is add an ssh file to the /boot dir and wpa_supplicant.conf file in root dir. Other distros typically don't, they need a monitor to be installed.

I know, that's why I wrote external peripherals and not external inputs. I don't want to sound cocky or be an asshole (we all know how easy it is by just reading a message someone you don't know wrote), but after 24 years of being in system administration/engineering/architecture I may have sufficient grasp of what I am talking about. 😅

My problem is that the ethernetports Clip is part of the case, without it, the Ethernet cable just doesn't stick. Do you have a solution for this problem? A photo would be really cool.