Home server

[Mark]

For the first time I now have the opportunity to have a desktop PC at home in a room where it's possible to leave it running all the time, so this opens up a few possibilities of things I can do.

It's running Windows Vista Business - As much as I'd like to rip that out and install CentOS Linux on it, it's my wife's work PC so that's not going to work!

Firstly, I assume there's no standard way to get a machine to swtich on at (say) 8am and off again at 10pm?

The most obvious thing to set up first is Remote Desktop, I guess that depends on my router setup mostly..

I'd also like to use it to do forum backups. Now in Linux I'd use cron and rsync, no idea if Windows has equivalents of these?

I assume there's quite a few more interesting things I could do

[Bezza]

Nice job on the NASCAR stuff, Mark

[AndySpeed]

Isn't that quite energy inefficient to just leave a computer on all the time? I'd hope you turn it off when you're done with it. The lights too.

[Mark]

Isn't that quite energy inefficient to just leave a computer on all the time? I'd hope you turn it off when you're done with it. The lights too.

The point is that I'd be accessing it remotely, so I couldn't physically go there to switch it on!

[GridGirl]

The other half uses Log Me In to remote access our PC which is pretty much always switched on. He bought a couple of 2TB hard drives about a month or so ago for our NAS drive and was doing something to them remotely which meant all sorts of noises where coming from my study. I was wondering what on earth was going on until I walked in to find the mouse curser moving about and the Log Me In banner at the top of the screen. Panic over, the study wasn't on fire or going to explode so I just left him doing whatever he was doing. I find it easier and less boring to ask questions at those kind of times.

[veeten]

... and now, here's Daniel with the latest. Daniel....

[Mark]

He's running late it seems

[slorydn1]

The one big thing to keep in mind with Windows is that it at the very least should be restarted every day or 2 or the computer seems to have a tendedncy towards locking up, etc. Our computers at work are on 24-7-365 being a 911 center, and we find that if we go beyond a couple of days without a restart the workstations get "buggy" and start to work slower and slower until they freeze up completely. I am not a programmer/IT guy so I have not a clue as to why this happens but it does. I have noted the inordinate number of the process "svchost.exe" running in the task manager when windows has been running 4 or 5 days straight versus when it is first booted up, but again, I have zero idea if that is in anyway linked, it was just something I noticed over time.

[Mark]

Sounds like a memory leak, computers can and should be able to run for months without restarting, mine usually have done.

She's just walked in with yet another machine! I might put Linux on that one... And I'm gonna need a KVM!

[martinbalmer]

The most obvious thing to set up first is Remote Desktop, I guess that depends on my router setup mostly..

Yes... typically you would connect to your router's Internet IP address from outside and your router would forward port 3389 traffic to a set private IP address on your network.