I've got a Cobalt Qube 3 Professional Edition computer. Remember those cute blue cube Linux appliances?  Sun was handing these out to SEs at one point.

They only have a 450MHz processor. But they are the perfect little home file server and networked backup device. The Business and Professional Editions also have a SCSI port to which additional storage can be attached. In fact, the Professional Edition has two internal disks and a built-in Raid1 Controller. It's headless, but has nice features for a server. Problem is (well, you might consider this a problem) it runs an old Linux release (based on a 2.2 kernel) and has been EOL'ed. But in true Open fashion, there is a grassroots community of developers and advocates, and there are instructions for how to refresh this device to a 2.4-based RedHat (v7.2)kernel here:

http://www.gurulabs.com/rhl-cobalt-howto/index.html

I just exchanged e-mail with Dax Kelson of Guru Labs, who told me that this procedure can be used to install RedHat 9 or even  the newer Fedora releases.

I think I'm going to give this a try. I'll let you know if/how this works out. Hmmm, with the new Linux-based SunRay Server Software, I could even potentially drive a couple wireless SunRays around the house, using an 802.11g Wireless Bridge, such as: http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=241

January 05, 2005 04:17 PM EST Permalink