February 14, 2026
Ancient bytes, modern fights
Can my SPARC server host a website?
Garage Grandpa Server Goes Online — Boomers Cheer, Hipsters Eye-Roll
TLDR: A 25-year-old Sun server now hosts a live website from a garage using a secure setup and Cloudflare tunnels. Comments split between nostalgic veterans cheering, purists grumbling about Cloudflare, and jokers pitching retro clusters—proving old tech still works and sparks big feelings online.
An internet dare turned garage art project: someone stood up a real website on a 25‑year‑old Sun server, slapped quiet fans on it, and used OpenBSD (a security‑focused system) with a strict “deny by default” firewall and Cloudflare tunnels (a service that safely exposes sites) to put sparc.rup12.net online. The comments lit up. Veterans flexed: “We did this in 1995.” One user coolly noted, “Yes, this box was made to host sites,” turning nostalgia into a victory lap.
Cue the drama: the Cloudflare choice became the villain of the thread. Purists sniffed it’s “sad” and insisted a simple hardware firewall would be more authentic. Others rolled their eyes at the whole trend—another retro server, another humblebrag—while fans of Sun machines swooned over their “indestructible” charm. The vibe swung between grandpa tech pride and hipster fatigue.
Then came the jokes: someone dreamed up a “Beowulf cluster” of antique tin cans, commenters bragged about garages stuffed with SPARC relics, and the rest just clicked the link to see if the fossil could serve a page. The consensus? It’s fun, it works, and it sparks a spicy debate about how “retro” you’re allowed to be in 2026. Everyone had opinions, of course. Today.
Key Points
- •A 2001 Sun Netra X1 SPARC server was configured to host a public website using OpenBSD 7.8.
- •The setup uses OpenBSD’s httpd to serve static content, pf firewall with default-deny rules, and Cloudflare Tunnels for exposure without port forwarding.
- •Hardware modifications replaced loud fans in the Netra X1 and a Cisco 2960-S switch with Noctua 40 mm units, reducing noise at the cost of higher temperatures.
- •OpenBSD was installed via PXE boot with TFTP/NFS due to the server lacking optical/USB boot; OpenBSD was chosen over Solaris and NetBSD for security reasons.
- •The system operates with modest resource usage (~55 MB RAM with OpenSSH) and uses minimal packages, with Rust available on sparc64.