I have an old ThinkPad 11e running Debian that I have repurposed into a home server. It’s only supposed to run TVheadend. I don’t need any other services for now, but later on i might add a few using docker.
Is it enough to set multiuser.target as default to disable gui and keep the system always on?
How can I disable all unnecessary services and minimize power usage?
And how much need is there for a UPS in this scenario - realistically.
Some of the people here take their admin-LARPing a tad too seriously. Most households have reliable enough electricity, and even if there’s an outage once every quarter, would a dead battery even help?
I advocate for being realistic with one’s own needs. Don’t build a five-nines datacenter for a glorified weather station or VCR.
The nice thing about some battery backup is not keeping it running during an outage, but safely shutting it all down.
I agree on the laptop battery, I’m just disagreeing on battery backup. It serves a purpose, as does decent surge elimination.
But not for us.
That’s what I meant by larping. The vast vast majority of us here would probably not even notice if their systems went down for an hour. Yes, battery backup has its purpose. In a datacenter.
I mean, what’s on the line here in the worst case? 15min without jellyfin and home assistant? Does that warrant taking risks with old batteries or investing in new ones?
That equation might change if you’re in a place with truly unreliable electricity, but I guess those places have solutions in place already.
No, hard disagree.
I have many thousands of dollars worth of hardware. I have seen the results of a surge. I have seen a NAS reduced to a paper weight. You’re making incredibly silly assumptions here - this has nothing to do with uptime, and everything to do with protecting your equipment.
You will not ever convince me otherwise, because I’m not willing to dump thousands of dollars on replacements because someone on the internet thinks it has anything to do with uptime.
You are wrong.
Edit: anywhere that weather exists is an area with “unreliable electricity”. Full stop.
We have blippy power in the windy season, a 1 second outage was enough to trash hardware, not to mention dirty power you may not visibly notice. My UPS kicks in every few weeks for a few seconds to provide clean power when the utility is falling short or over volting. Having a battery take over is super helpful
US defaultism in action, it seems.
The US default, that I never left Europe. What an achievement for the USA!
US power sucks plenty!
Texas is an extreme example, but outages happen everywhere. It was only a bit over 10 years ago when Sandy basically hit half the US and took power out in the tristate area for weeks. With climate change making things worse…
But even when things are running well, not including the random downed line or busted transformers, its still better to give your hardware clean power and avoid the small spikes.
That is why I said it depends. There are many places where electricity cuts for a short duration are quite frequent. Often you don’t even notice it, but a 24/7 server would be effected.
In general, I think the risk of laptop batteries catching fire is overstated especially if you limit the charge to 80% or so. So weighting these two issues against each other you can come out either way, but I think for most places it will come down towards a UPS being nice to have.
Worth taking a look at the battery - especially an old one on a repurposed device - before considering it safe. Spicy pillows happen.
Everything has pros and cons. I’ve seen 3 laptops (of my family) with batteries that looked like a baloon after several years. I’ve subsequently removed or replaced them. I’d definitely check on them every now and then. A UPS is nice. Burning down a house isn’t. I haven’t seen them catch on fire (yet), they supposedly have at least some protection. But definitely get them out of the laptop once they’re dead anyways or don’t look alright. Everyone is responsible to make that decision on their own. Take care.