JensBachtler
I am Radiologist (in German: Facharzt für Diagnostische Radiologie), working in a private medical practice (as employee) in Nuremberg, Germany.
I use a MoinMoin based wiki as a content management system in our intranet (LAN), where it supplies documents of our quality management system. It was first installed on a WinXP machine using MoinMoin 1.6.1 Desktop Edition. In 2010 it moved to moin 1.8.4 on a used IBM ThinkPad R50 notebook which since has been acting as a wiki server, running on a 24/7 basis - with apparently no server downtime. May 2012 brought a major update to xubuntu 12.04 LTS and moin 1.9.3 with moniker theme.
Using a notebook as a server: A notebook seems to be the ideal solution for use in an intranet setting where only a handful of clients uses the wiki. It is inexpensive (especially where old hardware can be used) and it does not require much space. Even an old battery with low capacity is very useful, because it can serve as a power supply for at least as long as the system needs to perform a regular shutdown. Tell the energy management to shut down automatically when running on battery with closed lid and the server will be quite safe from data loss due to power failure.
xubuntu and moin: Add wikiserver.py to the gnome properties > autostart and it will be run as a service - invisible and quite fast.
Messages for me
Hi, just read about your moin/notebook usage - nice!
Just wanted to note:
See SecurityFixes for security updates you may want to have.
- The hard disk will die (or develop bad sectors) some day, so have backups! if the hard disk is as old as the laptop, consider replacing it - if you use a SSD as replacement, it'll also become a lot faster.
- For low-memory machines, sometimes Xubuntu is even better, because it uses less RAM.
-- ThomasWaldmann 2013-02-27 16:11:04