Mailserver left on over holiday

[billmckinstry]

Hi forum,

We have a pc operating as a mail server with clarkconnect 4.3 (RHEL4.3)

While I am on holiday for 4 weeks the mailserver needs to stay on but it is hot here and I would like to have it generate as little heat as possible given it won't be doing much work.

Any suggestions on what and how I can set it to say, stop the hdd when idle for a certain time?

There are no settings on the GUI for this so I guess it will be commend line work.

The monitor is not required so this already turn off.

Appreciate any advice.

[billmckinstry]

Followed advice on www and did the following:

Changed VM writeback time from 499 to 1499 centisecs

Enabled laptop mode

edited /etc/syslog.conf
*.info;mail.none;authpriv.none;cron.none... -/var/log/messages

Trust nothing will cause sparks to fly and appreciate any critique and or advice on other things to do to keep the pc heat down.

Thanks,
Bill

[JGSheppard]

I suggest cleaning the case out before you go - it is amazing how much dust can accumulate even in a "clean" environment.

Also, check the fans - you might even consider installing another one. I live in a colder place but have two extra fans in my AMD Phenom X4 PC.

[Rubberman]

Cleaning system - good advice.
Adding external fan - also good.
If you can, reduce system/processor speed. Not sure how to do that on RHEL 4.x.
Drives just spinning don't take much power or generate much heat. Leaving them at their default settings is probably ok.

In any case, cleaning will help the most, probably. My systems start exhibiting heating problems when the dust gets too thick. Every couple of months I take the case cover off and blow/vacuum out as much as I can. It helps a lot.

[billmckinstry]

Thanks jgsheppard & rubberman, much appreciated.

I did the cleaning part couple of days ago and yes, a lot of dust. Wish the fan was easy to un clip to really clean the cooling fins.

With the changes I did, shown above, the pc is much cooler but still not as stone cold as the windows xp which has the hdd shut down but maybe being a mail server it must check for mail every so often.

Is there a way to set this activity so it only checks for mail every 15 mins?

Our ISP holds mail for up to 48hours. or does the isp send the mail anyway?

We have a router that connects to the outside world via a wireless connection (PPPOE)

When in NZ I will try and download a later version of ClarkConnect (Clear foundation) as here in PNG it costs too much to download large files.
The later version may have more features.

Thanks again for the advice.