Mail/Web server worth it?

I have been sitting here on occasion looking at the mostly unused Compaq P800, 256Mb, 20Gb and wondering whether it's worth turning it into a Mail/Web server.

As my ISP generously gives only one mail account, my family is forced to rely on GMail accounts. It's OK I suppose but they could at any time do what Yahoo did and stop giving free Pop forwarding. I basically stopped using my Yahoo account when they did that and just use it as an anti-spam address and to sign up for boards like this but rarely check it.

So, I obviously need to think up a catchy domain name and register it and probably also register with someone like DtDNS but is it really worth all the time, effort and the electricity to have the thing going 24 hours a day?

I suppose the spec of the machine is up to it and the most important partition would be /var and /home would be minimal, etc.

Anyone done this? Any comments?

Wayne

[daverj]

I got a domain name and setup a web/mail server using gentoo. After the distro install (which took a few hours), setting up the mail server took like 30 minutes, virtual sites and all.. The gentoo site has some excellent docs on how to do it. It was painless. Whether it is worth it or not, who knows? It may not be practical, but it sure is worth the learning.


davidj