Well after a lot of research and hard work the server's ready to drop off at colocation. There's still some grey areas but in all everything looks ready to go, better off there and running than sitting it home waiting.

So tomorrow I'll be driving down to RapidSwitch in Slough to drop it off, after which Michelle wants us to visit her grandparents who live in Farnborough; not far off from the facility.

Here's a quick rundown of the spec:

• O/S: Debian Etch 4.0 64-bit
• HDD: Software RAID 1 - 1TB
• MEMORY: 4GB Corsair
• CPU: AMD AM2 2+ghz
• BANDWIDTH: 3TB per month

Bit of a step up from the virtual server environment I get from SliceHost, but fingers crossed it should all go fine; had so much fun putting it together already planning the next incarnation ;-)

P.S.

Dark Knight is really really good, Heath Ledger has pulled off such a believable and terrifying character; have to see it again.

Update

Just got back from her grandparents; boy do they know how to cook a sunday lunch, lovely couple.

Server's online, it's stopped resyncing the raid drives thankfully, was a little worried about that but everythings loaded running and operating well.

Cat sitting next weekend, let's hope mickey isn't in one of his moods ;-)

All the best, have a great week people.

With all these problems, and the need to have the homegrown server running something stable I've decided on Debian Stable for the re-install. I'll be doing this with backports as that way I can at least grab the latest releases without damaging the core stable system; as it'll be sitting in colo I really don't want to drive down there every weekend to kick it back into gear.

Debian can be grabbed from here, note most people have never needed anything but the first dvd or first one or two cd iso's for a basic install so no need to grab everything.

Backports are available here, this at least gives the ability to keep up to date with more specific packages while not damaging the core system.

Fingers crossed this should be the final time I do a rebuild before it goes to colo.

[update]

server running a lot better, since I made the switch to Debian; won't be long now till it's taken down to colo.