notes for for a harddisk less laptop as a server

I got given an old T40 (its harddisk had died) I have set it up as a ligth weight low power server running a 8gb usb key as it hdd. Heres how;

Old laptops (in this case a ibm T40) dont have the "pae" feature needed for a ubuntu server 9.04 install u need to install the desktop version

Download the iso of the i386 ubuntu desktop liveCD as a bootable install (i dont use CDs or DVDs anymore)
http://www.ubuntu.com/GetUbuntu/download

Forget the CD bs..total waste... grab around this grab a 1GB usb key and unetbootin the iso into
http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

Now to kill the junk

sudo apitiude 

Select the gnome and x11 pieces and hit "-" key to mark them delete them hit "!" to fix any mistakes it makes and the "g" and "g" to get the removally running

You might need to repeat a few times to get out of dependancy hell and get rip it all out. some of the last steps you many need to pull piece by pieve and examine the dependances to make certian of that it not going to destablise the system.

Also if u take out "network-manager" you'll loose networking from the box... i was sshed at the time and noticed it very quickly to fix it get a physical login up and do;

sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces

then add the lines;

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

Next to automatically wipe the all the libs and junk that are hanging around for gnome do this;

sudo apt-get install deborphan 
sudo aptitude purge `deborphan --guess-all`

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq
(temp)mounting swap and tmp into the ram to reduce the usb read write stress

sudo mkswap -f /dev/ram15
sudo swapon /dev/ram15
sudo swapoff /dev/sda5
cat /proc/swaps

(perm)mounting swap in ram edit /etc/fstab and add..

/dev/ram0 none swap sw 0 0

If you mount swap into ram YOU MUST disable Hibernation as it writes this data to swap and without power the ram data is lost

(temp) mounting tmp into ram to reduce threshing
....