The new server
The circumstances under which I came to be running my website from a cheap server on the other side of the world are somewhat bizarre. The important things to consider are:
I used to work at ViaGold Direct Network and my site was hosted on their servers.
I played (and still do play) a lot of online games as a member of [furryclan].
When the time came to move on from ViaGold, I didn't know when or where I would have an opportunity to configure an internet-connected server to arbitrary specifications. I consulted with the the other clan members and we decided to pool our resources and pay for server colocation at Zentek International in Hong Kong.
So it was that a 400MHz Celeron system, which used to manage the ADSL connection in my flat, ended up running mail and web services for myself and my friends.
When the server started exhibiting hardware failures, this rather unlikely arrangement began to look unworkable. I'm in the UK, my server is in Hong Kong and ne'er the twain could meet should anything particularly disastrous befall it. New plans were hatched. A new server would be built. It would boast an IDE RAID controller card and four drives. It would reside in the US under the auspices of another clan member and be linked to the outside world via a business broadband account. And it would be built in the way I shall now describe!
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intro | part 1: Hardware | part 2: OS installation | part 3: OS installation take two | part 4: The new home