williade

Hi all.
My mother is sick of the younger kids wasting time on "non-educational" sites (f@ceb00k & mYsp@ce) and has asked for a centralized control system for our home network.

I told her a proxy server is the easiest way. I am going to be building my own server that will be running Ubuntu 8 server edition and the proxy filter will be Censornet. It is the same proxy that it used at the school where I work (I am a system administrator there), and I am familiar with it.

This will be my first Ubuntu build (the one at school is actually an old HP desktop) and I was wanting some opinions on my choice of parts.
Considering the server will likely be running 24/7 I will probably get a better PSU.

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Raptor_Jesus

Awesome! This hardware will run Ubuntu like it's nothing. I have an ubuntu NAS running on an ANCIENT 212mhz, 64mb RAM. 2x500 hard drive. It runs nicely, but it's time for an upgrade. I think this will work well for you. But maybe a corsair PSU, as it's on 24/7. A headless ubuntu server is a beautiful thing. 2 wires for me, Power, and Internet. Pure love. Let us know how it goes.

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Manyak

I think your build is overkill, lol. That CPU will be probably be able to handle well over 500Mbps of proxy traffic. Well, unless your internet speed is faster than that....

Also, try and get a motherboard with a 740/780 chipset. They use less electricity than the nVidia ones.

And like raptor said, since you're running it 24/7 I'd get a PSU known to be good and reliable even if it means a bit of extra cash. You risk completely losing all those components you're paying for if it dies a harsh death.


Edit: By the way, you might want to use LDAP to set clients to connect to the proxy server and prevent any changes. Otherwise your siblings might find a way around it.

Also, if she only wants to block a few specific sites, you can probably just do it through your router instead of going through all this.

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DuckieHo

Like Manyak said... the filtering can be done by your router. Instead of a proxy server, you could just build a custom router with Untangle: www.untangle.com/Web-Filter


You don't need a optical drive... just borrow one for another PC for the install. A single core and 1GB RAM should be plenty.

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Coma

Or you can just make it so facebook.com and myspace.com are set to one of Google's IPs in the hosts files on the home computers. You have access to them, after all...

They'll never figure it out, unless they're geeks like you.

You're getting way too excited over something simple. You can always just install software to do this filtering, and make them normal users so they can't remove it. Think cheap before building a server...

Oh, and I DON'T KNOW, maybe you should convince your mom that implementing gestapo-like Internet restrictions for your kids is not a good idea. Let them do what they want, don't be a jerk.

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Weedvender

Dude. The Athlon IIs are OVERKILL
Those processors are FAST. Check my sig rig.

Oh and On topic. Thats overkill. You can block these sites through the router. Its easy.

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Angmaar

I think you can filter sites or keywords through some options in Linksys Routers.

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williade

Thanks for the input guys.

The proxy will be using the inline configuration and none of them are smart enough to know how to bypass a proxy. Censornet has a massive database of bad sites, too many for me to track down and block through the router.

And before I am branded as a member of a fascist secret police organization I must (though I didn't want to) point out that a younger family member has an unhealthy addiction to er0tic material. Something that would be very hard to police with router firmware. And the restrictions would not apply to all family members, older siblings would be unfiltered.

As for putting filters on individual computers, there are about 8 machines in the house, some of which are not mine, and as such I have no right to install filters on them, BUT my mother is the one who pays for the internet connection, and reserves the right "police" the traffic going through the copper.

And borrowing a DVD drive from another machine would be a great way to cut costs and could go towards a good PSU.

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Phenon II x4 955 @ 3926.73 MHz Of course its not stable I just did it for the lulz

MalVeauX

Heya,

It's easier to stell them to go outside and play.

Anyhow, I have another suggestion for you. Instead of buying a big box and all that, have you considered getting a little super low energy use atom based netbook? It has enough hardware to run a simple little web server. It has its own built in battery with long uptime so even if there's several power blinks, the little guy would keep on going without a hitch. I mention it because from $200 to $300 you can get one, and it would do what you need, but the benefit (at least to me) is that it's extremely small, produces very little heat, and mainly uses very little energy so it would be a great way to save money on a 24/7 on machine.

Very best,

Weedvender

Good idea but don't you need two ethernet ports? You could probably build an unmanaged untangle system for much less. The only problem I see here is that someone might be able to just swipe the lappy.

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