Running a laptop as a server

TL;DR: I hoard electronics. Laptops as servers need configuration to avoid death-by-lid.

Every once in a while I buy my wife the latest, greatest laptop device for her needs (which for the last decade has basically meant getting her a nice solid Chromebook every 3 or so years). In trade, I usually keep her old laptop, wipe it clean and try to eventually find creative new uses for it.

The case of the Dell Inspiron 1521

In 2007, we had just moved to the U.S. but my wife was still pretty far from her family, so a laptop was still a necessity for her to stay in touch. So for Christmas, she got a Dell Inspiron 1521.

In 2010, the Inspiron 1521 laptop was already showing its age, so for Christmas, my wife got a first-of-its-kind Cr-48 Chromebook and the old laptop was dismissed from service.

I reinstalled the Windows OS but a 4GB RAM, dual-core laptop has its limits and it just wasn’t useful - so it sat on the shelf…

Recently, though, I picked it up again to give the laptop a new purpose … as a linux server for mild computing applications. I’m still not sure what I’ll run on it, but I like having linux servers with which to tinker, so here we are.

First things first: The old spindle HDD had to go - I replaced it with a Corsair MX500 SSD for which I found a deal. This gives me plenty of storage for VMs, containers, etc.

Everything else is stock, though, due to budget and practicality constraints.

As for OS: I went the Debian route; I had recently set up some Debian VMs on my main box and part of that journey was setting up apt-cacher-ng, so the trail was already blazed for me.

Servers don’t have lids

Repurposing a laptop as a server means dealing with some features that typical servers don’t have. The main one so far was the lid: by default, the OS triggers a hibernate when the laptop lid gets closed. Death-by-lid! I really want to avoid having a giant open (red) clamshell as an eyesore in my server hub.

Disable hibernate and turn the screen off/on when the lid closes/opens

After the initial installation and driver fixes, I confronted my death-by-lid situation. Disabling hibernate-by-lid was straightforward. However, the intermediate result caused the console display to remain on even when the lid was closed; this is not energy-efficient and will eventually burn out the screen.

I eventually arrived at the following solution:

# Disable hibernate
systemctl mask sleep.target suspend.target hibernate.target hybrid-sleep.target

# Install power and display management (vbetool since we're don't have X installed)
apt install -y acpid vbetool

# Configure ACPI lid action
mkdir -p /etc/acpi/actions/
cat <<EOF >/etc/acpi/actions/lid.sh
grep -q closed /proc/acpi/button/lid/LID/state && (vbetool dpms off)
grep -q open /proc/acpi/button/lid/LID/state && (vbetool dpms on)
EOF
chmod a+x /etc/acpi/actions/lid.sh
# Configure ACPI lid event to trigger action
cat <<EOF >/etc/acpi/events/lid
event=button/lid
action=/etc/acpi/actions/lid.sh %e
EOF
# Configure ACPId to autostart and (re)start it
systemctl enable acpid && service acpid restart

That’s it - now we don’t have to worry about burning in the LCD display and the server is a little more energy efficient.