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Minimal hardware for web server



I have offered to set up a web server for computer science students
here at Western Kentucky University to practice their cgi and perhaps
java skills on.  The machine would never have to support more than
about 5 simultaneous users, and usually would have only one user at a
time.  The idea is to have a machine that students can bang on without
endangering vital files on one of our big servers.

I administer a sun sparc with a few hundred users, and I run linux on
my personal machine, but I've never supported multiple users on a
linux box.  I'm not sure how much load I can handle with linux for a
given level of hardware.  This is a chance to show what debian linux
can do, so I'm excited -- but the hardware I will have will be very
marginal at best.  Will a 386 work?  I might be able to wheedle
something a little better, but I'm not sure.  I know java grinds down
fairly sustantial machines -- would there be any hope of getting java
to run at all on a 386?  Maybe we can reduce the web resource
requirements by running boa instead of apache. Are there any other
tricks for marginal hardware I can use that immediately spring to
mind?

I'd hate to fall on my face because of weak hardware and have people
blame linux; it would be better to cancel the whole thing rather than
bomb out.

How low can the hardware go?

steve


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