Inorp

Electricity costs is a big and growing issue within the IT world. The fact that larger server parks consume large amounts of electricity is given, however how often do you calculate how much electricity that server you got running somewhere in your house is actually consuming? Here’s my findings in this subject, having a small server currently running barely any load. The question is if its worth even having it running at all.

According to this article from the University of Waterloo, a 40 watt fluorecent overhead lamp draws more power overnight then a modern PC running in safe mode. My guess is that this applies to a client computer and that it would be hard to have a server unit run in safe mode (given that there are some server-load).

An actual electricity measurment would be prefferable, but in my case I have no such tools, and I am willing to settle for an estimate on the consumtion of my servers.

Given the PSU-calculator on this site, the old server computer should draw around 119w / hour. Which totals to around 85 Kw’s per month and around 1020 Kw’s per year.

No monitors, only the server hardware and perhaps some usb devices attached.

This is rather old news, however since I found guides from people explaining how they have spend 10 hours to get this working, I just might have an ubuntu-related guide that does this faster..

Given my local dev-server (1000mhz, 400mb ram) running the latest ubuntu server installation together with my cheap usb1.1 webcam.

Since I’m using the server version, this is the text-based install guide.

• Given that you have ubuntu installed.
• Make sure the /etc/apt/sources.list have both universe and backports enabled. (also run “apt-get update” after any change)
• Run “apt-get -s install motion” and have a quick lock so that any unwanted parts your system installation won’t be removed.
• run “apt-get install motion”
• run “apt-get install ffmpeg” (add -s if you which to look over the changes..)
• plug-in your usb-webcam.
• run “dmesg” and check if the plug and play detection went ok. It should probably be in any of the later rows if you just recently plugged it in.
• open /etc/motion/motion.conf (for instance: “pico /etc/motion/motion.conf”)
• change the settings of your choosing (also check the video-device link).. check the motion website for a good explanation of the settings.. http://www.lavrsen.dk/twiki/bin/view/Motion/WebHome
• after completing the config, run “motion”.. Any errors will display.
• Check the given directory for image/video-files. given that the camera install went fine.
• Your installation is complete. Run motion in deamon mode next time (”motion -d”)

Trying to update a html-page without having a) annoying refreshes of the entire page, b) a third party framework implementation (ie: Java/Flash/etc..). My experience is that a “third party” implementation more or less makes the best solution however there are alternatives. For instance a simple AJAX-based implementation of such a function would be possible. This also does have its drawbacks, but for now we could look at the possibilities.

Attached is one solution involving PHP and a standard OSI-certified AJAX-framework called Agent AJAX. Please note the drawbacks of this solution. If the client/server connection is poor, the transfers in AJAX might create problems for the Client. You can of course overcome this problem by simply thinking your solution through and for instance creating feedback to the user at any transaction that might fail.

<? /* * Ajax based live updating stock chart example. Based upon the Ajax Agent framework. * Author Pierre Norraeus * 2006-02-21 */ // Generate the html-table. you can, ofcourse, do this any way you want. function printPrices() { $text = “</p> <table> <tr> <td><b>Stock</td> <td><b>Market</b></td> <td><b>Open</b></td> <td><b>Close</b></td> <td><b>Updated</b></td> <td><b>Trade</b></td> </tr> <tr> <td>AAA</td> <td>A</td> <td>10</td> <td>13</td> <td>“.date(”Y-m-d H:i:s”).”</td> <td><a xhref=http://www.inorp.com/# onclick=\”call_trade(’1′)\” >Trade</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td>BBB</td> <td>B</td> <td>20</td> <td>23</td> <td>“.date(”Y-m-d H:i:s”).”</td> <td><a xhref=http://www.inorp.com/# onclick=\”call_trade(’2′)\” >Trade</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td>CCC</td> <td>C</td> <td>30</td> <td>33</td> <td>“.date(”Y-m-d H:i:s”).”</td> <td><a xhref=http://www.inorp.com/# onclick=\”call_trade(’3′)\” >Trade</a></td> </tr> </table> <p>\n”; return $text; } function trade($pid) { $text = “trade,”.$pid; return $text; } // include the framework base.. include_once(”agent.php”); // init the framework.. $agent->init(); ?> <html> <head> <meta name=”generator” content=”pico”> <meta name=”author” content=”Norraeus”> <meta name=”keywords” content=”Ajax testsetup.”> <meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=iso-8859-1″> </head><br /> <script> function call_trade(str) { agent.call(\’’,\’trade’,\’callback_trade’,str); } function callback_trade(str) { document.getElementById(’divTrade’).innerHTML = str; } function call_printPrices() { call_setLoading(); agent.call(\’’,\’printPrices’,\’callback_printPrices’); //Update the table every.. 2 seconds? setTimeout(’call_printPrices()’,2000); } function callback_printPrices(str) { call_unsetLoading(); document.getElementById(’tablePrices’).innerHTML = str; } function call_setLoading() { callback_printLoading(’Loading…’); } function call_unsetLoading() { callback_printLoading(’ ‘); } function callback_printLoading(str) { document.getElementById(’showLoading’).innerHTML = str; } function init() { call_printPrices(); } </script> <p> <body onload=”init()”> <center> <b>Simple stock chart example..</b></p> <h4>Current Stock Prices</h4> <p><!– you can also have a button for updates.. –> <!– <a xhref=http://www.inorp.com/# onclick=”call_printPrices()”><b>here</b></a> to test.–></p> <div id=’tablePrices’></div> <div id=’divTrade’></div> <div id=’showLoading’></div> <p><a xhref=”http://www.ajaxtechforums.com” >Ajax Tech Forums</a> </center> </body> </html>

Every single day of software development we encounter problems, which we develop solutions for. Every time you develop a solution for a software problem, you can bet yourself there will be a number of people out there that have a better solution for the same problem. My plan is to share, at least my own, small solutions for the daily development problems and maybe someone else can use the information found here to manufacture an even better solution.

The thought behind this website is not to limit the problems to a specific architecture. Google and similiar search engines will do a splended job in indexing this site, making people find what they are after through search engines instead..