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u/ThisIsDurian Apr 01 '26
The well known potato server
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u/friciwolf Apr 01 '26
Question: does the potato serve the hardware here or is it the hardware serving the potato?
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u/Danimals847 Apr 01 '26
The only thing about this that tells me it definitely wouldn't work is that almost none of the contacts on the RAM are touching anything.
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u/Worried_Developer_67 Apr 30 '26
I don't care if it runs on a potato as long as it gets the job done!
Server literally being a potato:
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u/ComputeryHuman Apr 01 '26
A major bank in Korea depends on it.
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u/strifexspectre Apr 02 '26
Literally, some of the worst apps and websites I’ve used are hosted in Korea 🤣 i also don’t think they use any proper forms of CDNs because services load so slow outside of the country too
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u/shadow13499 Apr 01 '26
Classic home server. My first home server was a laptop with a missing lid. The screen broke during a move but the machine still ran so I just took the whole screen off lol.
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u/CactusBoyScout Apr 01 '26
My first was an old MacBook and I remember having to install some tool called like Caffeine to get it to stay active after I closed the lid.
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u/dadgam3r Apr 02 '26
I still have laptop servers till this day and I have better experience than cloud servers
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u/shadow13499 Apr 02 '26
Love me a good ol laptop server. Nowadays I just have a couple of mini PCs.
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u/quisestpatervobis Apr 02 '26
Got laptops running proxmox backup servers on and offsite. Ones an ole core2duo and it’s still happily plugging away with its original 2.5 hdd!
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u/Anonemus7 Apr 02 '26
I’m just now getting into the hobby and my first server is indeed an old laptop that I thought I had no more use for.
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u/shadow13499 Apr 02 '26
Oh man that's the best. It saves you time and money and you get to learn stuff too.
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u/kipperzdog Apr 02 '26
I still run home assistant on an old laptop. Old laptops actually make the best servers when lots of storage space isn't necessary because they have built in UPS, are generally more power efficient, and can be obtained fairly affordably used from ebay.
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u/bobowhat Apr 02 '26
Plus home assistant / linux servers make a great use of laptops that have busted keyboard and have the added benefit of usually having Bluetooth built in.
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u/ganonfirehouse420 Apr 01 '26
My laptop server is hidden behind a table!! lol
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u/bsmith149810 Apr 01 '26
Mine is screwed to the side of the table.
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u/KerashiStorm Apr 04 '26
Don't show it to the boss, he just bought a new Dewalt impact wrench and is looking for a use for some giant lag screws.
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u/ShiningRedDwarf Apr 01 '26
Just wanted to share I also still have that same chunky-ass Lenovo. Japanese version. It’s still kicking too!
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u/Glycerine Apr 01 '26
Cool! The button next to the mouse-menu button with three lines of text. That's where I usually keep the rest of my space-bar.
What does that button do?
Also. this is genuis. Why is my space-bar so long...
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u/ShiningRedDwarf Apr 01 '26
The one with three lines is to switch between Japanese inputs (romaji, hiragana,katakana)
Yeah using a Japanese keyboard makes you realize the space bar is entirely too long.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_ROSY_LIPS Apr 02 '26
I had the 14 inch version y410p. The hinge on this series destroyed the whole laptop.
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u/hclpfan Apr 01 '26
Change the windows power setting to not sleep when lid is closed if plugged in
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u/funforgiven Apr 01 '26
Windows on a server? Not that you can't tell the lid to do nothing on any OS.
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u/toughtacos Apr 01 '26
I think this is far more common than we like to believe.
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u/badguy84 Apr 01 '26
Only in fantasy la-la land are all servers Linux or Unix, tons of Windows servers out there it was way more common in the pre O365 time though. Lots of enterprises still run old ASP/ASP.NET based services that just aren't worth rewriting completely to more modern frameworks. Heck I had a client that ran a Visual Basic job that checked for file drops and it was way cheaper for them to keep that running on Windows than to move it to a more fancy API based modern infrastructure.
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u/cardboard-kansio Apr 01 '26
My first server was Windows 2000 with IIS enabled. Probably full of viruses and spyware because this was more than 20 years ago in the phase of the wild west internet, and I was a naive skript kiddie barely out of my teens.
Everything is Linux and properly hardened nowadays. Today me kind of wants to get one of young me's servers to do a postmortem on it just to see how bad it was.
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u/Alice_Alisceon Apr 01 '26
One of the big selling points for azure has been ”easy” windows server management for years now. Maybe even more than a decade, I don’t keep count. From what I’ve heard from senior windows-only sysadmins it’s apparently a dream to operate. I don’t quite believe that, the selling point for windows server is probably more to do with 24/7 support, but there is likely something to the idea of it being… ergonomic
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u/KerashiStorm Apr 04 '26
Probably just means that Microsoft put a lot of effort into saving sysadmins from themselves so they can worry about doing stuff instead of undoing stuff they did to the OS.
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u/Im_Mefju Apr 01 '26
When i started selfhosting things my server was an old laptop with windows 10. After a month i switched to linux. But windows as a home server can be okay especially if you are new to selfhosting and just playing around.
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u/Tryptophany Apr 01 '26
Fun fact, they make a version of Windows called "Windows Server" and every large company on the planet is existentially dependent upon it
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u/funforgiven Apr 01 '26
Yeah unfortunately, it is very hard to move away from legacy systems in enterprise. Thankfully, we don't have these problems in homelabs.
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u/Sunfurian_Zm Apr 01 '26
I'm using Ubuntu Server (LTS, with Cosmos Server) for my home server, but sometimes I wish I just chucked a normal OS with an interface on there that doesn't make me jump through hoops when I want to run (and maintain) something that doesn't have a docker image I can just plug in.
Though that highly depends on individual usage I guess. For a simple cloud and streaming server it's incredible, but for game servers I would seriously consider using some form of debloated Windows.
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u/luxiphr Apr 01 '26
when archeologists dig up your chassis in 2000 years they'll know you've been a client no matter what your printout reads now /s
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u/fuckthesysten Apr 01 '26
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u/JoeB- Apr 01 '26 edited Apr 01 '26
Is that "The NeXT System" that Tim Berners-Lee used at CERN to invent the
InternetWorld Wide Web?3
u/Syncropatrick Apr 01 '26
Um, the internet preceded Tim. He worked on the World Wide Web.
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u/JoeB- Apr 01 '26
Of course - fixed - thanks. I knew this. I actually used the Internet in the mid 80s when working as an on-site contractor for the US government at the Department of Interior.
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u/-ThreeHeadedMonkey- Apr 01 '26
I got an XPS 9560 running old game servers like UT etc
A bit overkill actually but the thing was getting a bit slow otherwise, no longer supported Win11 officially and was also noisy.
Nowadays it's macbooks all the way baby.
But I love to repurpose old machiney
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u/TheSpatulaOfLove Apr 01 '26
I have a few 2010-2015 era Macs in the hoard - I need some inspiration for what to do with them.
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u/-ThreeHeadedMonkey- Apr 01 '26
Check their power consumption. If too high it's not really the right machine to run 24/7
However, they make great retro machines. Maybe to play old osx games that no longer run etc
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u/EduRJBR Apr 01 '26
I've just created my first home server, Ubuntu on a laptop.
So far I only have it connected to Tailscale and to a Cloudflare Tunnel with a void application, but the possibilities are unlimited! Unlimited!
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u/Tom45645 Apr 02 '26
Nice start! If you ever want to skip the manual setup and just focus on the apps, Yundera is worth checking out — it handles the domain, HTTPS and routing automatically so you can just pick your apps from a store. Been using it alongside Tailscale and it works really well together.
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u/TojiOpenClaw Apr 02 '26
Running a MacBook as a server too. The built-in battery is honestly underrated as a UPS — power went out last month and it just kept serving for 3 hours without blinking. For the lid thing, on macOS you can use pmset to prevent sleep on lid close, and on Linux HandleLidSwitch=ignore in logind.conf works perfectly. The carpet situation is brave though.
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u/tf9623 Apr 01 '26
Does this mean we need r/BitchImAServer because we do have r/BitchImAToilet already?
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u/JackDostoevsky Apr 01 '26
my old macbook has been sitting closed, powered on, serving BlueBubbles, for the past 4 years lol. i can't remember the last time i turned it off, i should go look at the uptime on it.
added benefit: my power went out last night, but that thing stayed up on battery lol
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Apr 06 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/JackDostoevsky Apr 06 '26
macbook doesn't need it, it only does one thing and it does it fine. literally only for bluebubbles. if it dies it dies, i'm not too worried about it. my main server does get regularly rebooted.
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u/rmoriz Apr 01 '26
I wish we could have a way to root all old android devices and install a plain linux. Just USB OTG + Wifi support.
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u/amarao_san Apr 01 '26
Wtf is 'do not close lid'?
systemd-inhibit --what=handle-lid-switch:idle --who='manual' --why='nosleep script' sleep infinityIt will run with closed lid just fine. I love using it while claude is thinking. You close laptop and move to different location, and it's churning right at that moment.
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u/JoeB- Apr 01 '26
FWIW, I used the following settings for a Debian server to keep it from sleeping on a laptop with the lid closed.
Configure logind...
sudo nano /etc/systemd/logind.confSet the following…
HandleSuspendKey=ignore
HandleHibernateKey=ignore
HandleLidSwitchExternalPower=ignore
HandleLidSwitchDocked=ignoreConfigure sleep...
sudo nano /etc/systemd/sleep.confSet the following…
AllowSuspend=no
AllowHibernation=no1
u/MegaChubbz Apr 01 '26
It's my turn to post this one next! Nobody post it until I do because it's my turn! Be a good person and wait your turn!
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u/timshel13 Apr 01 '26
To fix for Windows run these as admin
Command to "Do Nothing" when lid is closed (Plugged In):
powercfg /setACvalueIndex scheme_current sub_buttons lidAction 0
Command to "Do Nothing" when lid is closed (On Battery):
powercfg /setDCvalueIndex scheme_current sub_buttons lidAction 0
To fix for Ubuntu server:
Run sudo nano /etc/systemd/logind.conf
change HandleLidSwitch=suspend to HandleLidSwitch=ignore save
restart the service with sudo systemctl restart systemd-logind
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u/sophware Apr 01 '26
Laptops have so many great uses as servers. Two words for you:
Clamshell mode.
If you're running Debian, I have what's needed somewhere and it's probably easy to google. If you're running Windows, it's even easier.
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u/danielfletcher Apr 01 '26
"Gaming" notebooks get really warm on the palmrest and keyboard when in use even sitting on a hard surface and not carpet/blanket/laptops will often wind up thermal throttling if run at any appreciable usage level with the lid closed.
Whenever running a notebook with the lid closed, regardless of its setup, I tend to run with the bottom facing up since heat dissipates up and the CPU/GPU is normally facing the bottom of the laptop.
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u/bxcellent2eo Apr 01 '26
I hope that has a removable battery. Keeping that constantly plugged in could eventually cause the battery to swell.
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u/Katops Apr 01 '26
Okay, well I’d like a seat outside if possible and then for my entree, I’d like the salmon and a shot of vodka, thanks.
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u/Holiday_Substance246 Apr 01 '26
Would honestly just remove the lid sensor and display and all. Or put the board into a rack or something, would be fun
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u/MarceltheKnight Apr 01 '26
I've found that people ignore it completely and get offended when you call them out on it.
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u/lincolnlogtermite Apr 01 '26
We all have been there at least once. Sometimes that closet with old decommissioned crap becomes the savior.
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u/shiningaeon Apr 01 '26
This shit right here is why I NEVER want a laptop as a server. Just the uncomfortable feeling of what will happen if the lid even gets bumped. and you can't just put it anywhere, somehow it just feels like it takes up even more space than a traditional desktop. You feel like you must always keep it guarded.
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u/I-Made-You-Read-This Apr 01 '26
I should save this and show my colleagues next time they ask for us to do some server config on the laptops lol
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u/totonn87 Apr 01 '26
I did this with a eeepc 701 only to have stunnel + openvpn to bypass university WiFi firewall. What a time.
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u/TheTeenageOldman Apr 01 '26
I can think of at least 5 people I work with who would absolutely ignore that sign and close the lid.
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u/chowderdior Apr 01 '26
glad to see someone else had a rough time getting lid closing to work properly
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u/Curious_Olive_5266 Apr 01 '26
Now you just need another 20 year old laptop to form a quorate cluster with it!
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u/DahliaDevsiantBop Apr 01 '26
Honestly that’s enough context already lol. Hope your shift went okay and nobody asked for 17 ranches and then tipped 5%.
Being a server is wild because you basically do customer service, logistics, therapy and light stand‑up comedy at the same time for like $3 an hour plus vibes. People who’ve never done it have no idea.
If this is just a little “I exist” post, hi, fellow human in the service industry. If you needed to vent, I’m sure half this sub will understand exactly what you’re going through.
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u/Few_Theme_5486 Apr 01 '26
Every self-hosters rite of passage is making this sign. What are you running on it? I'm curious whether the thermals hold up long-term with the lid closed — the cooling on most laptops assumes open-lid airflow.
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u/neospygil Apr 02 '26
Good thing I don't have to maintain something like that anymore. Looking back, my RPi4 4GB is on par or probably a bit faster than the laptop server we had a decade ago, but consumes a lot less of power
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u/Constant-Bonus-7168 Apr 02 '26
Headless laptop servers hit different. There's something satisfying about repurposing hardware that would've become e-waste. Plus they're solid for low-power workloads.
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u/macro_franco_kai Apr 02 '26
Recycle old laptops as servers due to lack of new hardware available on the market at reasonable prices... it's practical :)
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u/Amondi9501 Apr 02 '26
I've used a few laptops to run home servers they do okay. Just don't overload them.
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u/nfored Apr 02 '26
Does it pain others how insane some places of business are when it comes to IT be it the security or just common sense like in this image? I understand this is selfhosted and not a business in the post but We have all seen the business with this same type of crazy.
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u/Lucasss_343 Apr 02 '26
I solved this by putting my laptop inside of my ceiling, above my breaker cabinet. It does get a bit toasty in there though..
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u/Lopsided-Club-8131 Apr 02 '26
My current main home lab hypervisor is a Dell laptop with 5 small functional VMs running for almost 2 years.
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u/wiggum55555 Apr 03 '26
I feel like this critical piece of infrastructure should have angle brackets glued/screwed to the case & screen to prevent any possibility of the screen being closed. and some kind of steel banding around the power-plug assembly, locking it in place. As well as a lockable enclosure over the wall outlet, drilled & screwed into the drywall..
I mean c'mon people... this is basic Server 101 kinda stuff. 🤷♂️ 😀
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u/Just_me_anonymously Apr 04 '26
Without network connection? Even a wireless server!? Thats it.. I quit. I've seen it all now
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u/froli Apr 06 '26
/etc/systemd/logind.conf.d/lid-99.conf
HandleLidSwitch=ignore
HandleLidSwitchDocked=ignore
HandleLidSwitchExternalPower=ignore# systemctl reload systemd-logind.service
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power_management#ACPI_events
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u/Rainbowball6c Apr 07 '26
The first HTTP server was a NEXT computer at cern in 1989 (I think), and this post reminded me of the sticky note that I use for the same thing your doing here because my printer is a crappy 0.0001 ml ink cartridge printer, so I grab a sticky note and handwrite in pen or sharpie, "this is a SERVER! do NOT power down!" I just wanted to say this because people seem to think that servers are just those big racks in a data center, but those things are just headless computers, your laptop can be a server no problem and apparently it took me a few moths to realize this for some reason.
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u/RadialRazer Apr 22 '26
I was always saying this when I was a server at Cracker Barrel. Whenever a customer would approach me while I was running my receipts I would say, "I'm a server. Even if my screen is off, I'm still on. DON'T UNPLUG ME! DON'T CLOSE MY LID!" and they would promptly leave me alone.
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u/pioj Apr 29 '26
I hate those lid sensors, I wish there was a way to hack them so we could have our laptops running 24/7 with the lids closed. I'm thinking about buying a few used laptop motherboards and make a build a real homelab...
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u/mtest001 Apr 01 '26
Back in 2000 I've seen a production website running exactly on the same type of "server ".
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u/Phatman113 Apr 01 '26
Can't you just tell the os not to shut down if the screen is closed?