Full server experience on Raspberry pi?

[inu]

I'm pretty much just wondering, but, with only the absolutely necessary, and no graphical interface, would it be possible, at least in theory to run a small server, to support somewhere between 6 to 36 players on a Raspberry Pi?

I can imagine the server running on SD cards would eat through the little things lifespan in no time, but that could probably be solved by simply using an external hard drive for the database storage.

The main questions are really... would it have enough juice to support those many players? And as it stands would the code even compile on ARM?

Thanks in advance.

[atom0s]

DSP is fairly memory intensive vs. CPU intensive. The need for a database is there and doing it externally would possibly cause some lag if the servers are not on the same network.

As for compiling on ARM, not sure no one here has probably tried to do it.

What are the stats of your pi?

[inu]

Don't own one just yet, but I'm working on ordering one soon, that's why I decided to post the question. Will undoubtedly go for the 512MB Model B since it has an ethernet port.
Was more thinking more in the lines of USB storage, and perhaps not a network drive.

[atom0s]

512MB probably wont be enough to run DSP plus the OS for the Pi itself.

At the moment, the current stock DSP game server runs at ~512MB of memory alone.
http://i.imgur.com/6rpf5Up.png

And this does not include the lobby and search servers as well.

[inu]

Thank you for all the information.
Guess I'll have to look elsewhere for a fully silent low power server.

[atom0s]

Are there any higher-end Pi's that have like 2gigs of RAM instead of just 512?
If you plan to run the server with just a few people 1-2gigs should be ok.

Higher end servers though with like 100+ people should definitely be pushing 8gigs+ not to mention when the more fundamental features get added like mesh navigation, memory requirements will be even higher.

[inu]

It would be a server for a small amount of people, only 4 to 6 most of the time.
Unfortunately the Raspberry Pi only comes in 256 and 512MB flavors. Kind of a bummer.

[atom0s]

Some alternatives you could look into:
http://www.udoo.org/features/
http://www.minnowboard.org/
http://www.lemaker.org/
http://imx.solid-run.com/wiki/index.php ... d_Hardware

All of these have 1/2gigs of RAM instead.

[whitevamp]

you can check out Xi3's comps
http://www.xi3.com/

[inu]

Well, the advantage of the RPi was that it was $35 (plus shipping), and I have old external hard drives i could use already.
Might have to keep checking my options for a while longer...

In the meanwhile might take a different approach and see how small or stripped down i can get a linux dist. working with it, if i find the time, so i can VM it on my current near-silent laptop. It just doesn't make sense to keep an "old" desktop burning away just to run the server, plus it's quite noisy.
It's a shame i can't compile it on XP, as the whole affair would stay within 4GB, which is small and light enough.