# VIA Epia M10000 Nehemiah as server

## Xerxes83

I am thinking about buying the VIA m10000N to use as a server. Only problem is that I just read several reviews bashing the performance (see for example here). It won't have to do very heavy computations, but I don't want to wait for too long if it has to compile a new kernel/php/glibc. Can anyone give me an indication of how long it would take to compile glibc (or just a basic system from stage 1)? I can also opt to buy a new AMD motherboard/CPU (the old CPU died on me  :Sad: ).

Any insights would be greatly appreciated!

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## !equilibrium

yes you are true, EPIA are slow comparated to the other CPU, but the Nemehia series are not so slow as the C3/Ezra versione.

i use every day EPIA mobo, for different scopes, and i can assure you that the Nemehia serie are quick as a P3 1 / 1.2Ghz, for a server are very good solutions.

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## zen_guerrilla

If you have other boxes on your lan use distcc (check the docs on how to use it with emerge) &

put faster machines first on the distcc_hosts list. 

I have a duron/750 running mythtv as my htpc & it also doubles as syslog/www/proxy/samba/nfs

server for my my home lan (3 other pc's), which I plan to switch to eden quite soon.

Everything installed from stage1 using my idle athon 2500+  :Smile: .

Plus via processors are really quiet & consume far less power compared to a "normal" pc, thus they 

save you money in the long-term. 

They also have crypto extensions that really speed up things like ssl without adding any cpu load

(use latest kernel for that or openbsd - no trolls here, it just has better hardware crypto support).

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## Xerxes83

Thanks for the replies. I have decided to give the Epia M10000N a try  :Smile:  After I have received the board and installed things I'll definately post a follow up here.

B.t.w., is it also possible to use the hardware crypto functions with the latest 2.4 kernel? I think the 2.6 kernels are not secure enough, so if possible I would like to keep running a 2.4 kernel.

Edit: There is a patch available for kernel 2.4.30 here. But it also seems that other programs have to be patched in order to make use of the padlock engine.

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## Xerxes83

I have been using the system for quite a while now, and I must say it's pretty fast. The only thing that slows it down is checking my mail using Horde (PHP/MySQL) over a secure connection (HTTPS) using an internal IMAPS connection (so a lot of encryption going on in combination with a heavy PHP script). Definately recommended if you need a 'personal' server  :Smile: 

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## chunderbunny

If you are having trouble with performance during encryption processes you should know that Nehemiah processors come with hardware encryption/decryption which makes VIA boards the fastest around for this kind of work. There is an option in the kernel somewhere to turn it on.

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## Xerxes83

If I understand it correctly you have to patch all software that uses encryption to use the hardware encryption/decryption. And that would mean I would have to maintain a lot of software manually... very inconvenient. So unless they add a USE-flag to portage I don't think I will be using it.

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