6 ms·

Use an Old Linux Computer to Put your Baby to Sleep

35 points by noaharc 17y ago

aw3c2 17y ago
What a waste of power.
- noonespecial 17y ago
  Nonsense. Anyone who's ever experienced a cranky child and a wind-up rocker would gladly sacrifice a few kwh's for some peace and quiet! The fans in that old beast probably provide some nice soothing white noise as well. I myself collect usb cdroms that no longer read correctly for use as impromptu servos. You just never know when you're gonna need your linux box to pull a latch or give something a nudge. Edit: Oh... Or this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=868523 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=868523 Psst don't tell Arrington. The "crunch-monitor" would be more than I could handle.
- brunoqc 17y ago
  It's a Mythtv box. There's good chance it's always on.
jrockway 17y ago
Very clever hack :)
ananthrk 17y ago
instead of two eject commands (eject and eject -t, as prescribed in the link), you can also use eject -T (this will toggle between open and close) :)
- dryicerx 17y ago
  aah the baby rocker one lined while true; do eject -T; done;
anApple 17y ago
He probably has to buy a new cdrom drive every second day.
jlc 17y ago
That'll work for a while. Then the kid's going to be up half the night recompiling his kernel.
rbanffy 17y ago
Just to set the record straight, it could be done with any *nix-ish OS such as BSD or OSX.
esila 17y ago
I can't find the link, but I remember reading an article a while back about utilizing the opening/closing of the CD drive to manually push the reset button on a server. It was a sysadmin's story of how one of the servers needed a manual reboot every so often and it could only be done with someone physically being there to push the reset button. He set an old computer up with the CD drive directly facing the server's reset button. From there, he set up a cron job to send the "eject/close" command remotely whenever something went wrong with the other server. Story ends saying that they no longer use that server, however that other computer just sits in the corner, faithfully ejecting/closing its CD drive to this day. Hopefully someone here can provide the link :)
- tetsuo13 17y ago
  That was a lesson from The Daily WTF: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/ITAPPMONROBOT.aspx http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/ITAPPMONROBOT.aspx

35 points by noaharc 17y ago

aw3c2 17y ago

What a waste of power.

noonespecial 17y ago
Nonsense. Anyone who's ever experienced a cranky child and a wind-up rocker would gladly sacrifice a few kwh's for some peace and quiet! The fans in that old beast probably provide some nice soothing white noise as well. I myself collect usb cdroms that no longer read correctly for use as impromptu servos. You just never know when you're gonna need your linux box to pull a latch or give something a nudge. Edit: Oh... Or this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=868523 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=868523 Psst don't tell Arrington. The "crunch-monitor" would be more than I could handle.
brunoqc 17y ago
It's a Mythtv box. There's good chance it's always on.

jrockway 17y ago

Very clever hack :)

ananthrk 17y ago

instead of two eject commands (eject and eject -t, as prescribed in the link), you can also use eject -T (this will toggle between open and close) :)

dryicerx 17y ago
aah the baby rocker one lined while true; do eject -T; done;

anApple 17y ago

He probably has to buy a new cdrom drive every second day.

jlc 17y ago

That'll work for a while. Then the kid's going to be up half the night recompiling his kernel.

rbanffy 17y ago

Just to set the record straight, it could be done with any *nix-ish OS such as BSD or OSX.

esila 17y ago

I can't find the link, but I remember reading an article a while back about utilizing the opening/closing of the CD drive to manually push the reset button on a server. It was a sysadmin's story of how one of the servers needed a manual reboot every so often and it could only be done with someone physically being there to push the reset button. He set an old computer up with the CD drive directly facing the server's reset button. From there, he set up a cron job to send the "eject/close" command remotely whenever something went wrong with the other server. Story ends saying that they no longer use that server, however that other computer just sits in the corner, faithfully ejecting/closing its CD drive to this day. Hopefully someone here can provide the link :)

tetsuo13 17y ago
That was a lesson from The Daily WTF: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/ITAPPMONROBOT.aspx http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/ITAPPMONROBOT.aspx