Headless Mac Mini running OSX server - doing restarts remotely?

[alexjholland]

Hi, as posted elsewhere, I'm planning to get a Mac Mini to wall-mount in my hallway cupboard with hard-drives attached, for iTunes and Plex streaming, as well as storing files and doing backups.

I may go to Australia for a year and rent my flat out, accessing my server whilst away.

I'm planning to make it a headless setup. Naturally I'll plug into my LCD monitor for setup, but once that's done and it's screwed into the cupboard, can I get by for a year potentially, of not having a monitor?

What if I tell it to restart from remote login? Will it restart and log straight back in again, so I can remote login again?

Might I have to ask my tenant to power off/on occasionally - if so, how often?

Thanks!

 

[paulrbeers]

Hi, as posted elsewhere, I'm planning to get a Mac Mini to wall-mount in my hallway cupboard with hard-drives attached, for iTunes and Plex streaming, as well as storing files and doing backups.

I may go to Australia for a year and rent my flat out, accessing my server whilst away.

I'm planning to make it a headless setup. Naturally I'll plug into my LCD monitor for setup, but once that's done and it's screwed into the cupboard, can I get by for a year potentially, of not having a monitor?

What if I tell it to restart from remote login? Will it restart and log straight back in again, so I can remote login again?

Might I have to ask my tenant to power off/on occasionally - if so, how often?

Thanks!

Didn't we cover all of this? Yes you can tell it to restart remotely as long as you use some kind of Remote management software. Just make sure you have set it to automatically log into an admin account upon restart and make sure whatever remote management software you have, is set to start up automatically as well. There are a million articles on how to do auto login and a million articles on how to make software start automatically in OSX. Google it.

As for how often to restart, there is no time frame. I never restart my Mini's unless something goes awry. Frankly power outrages occur often enough that thats all I need for restarts (use a UPS to automatically shut down your Mini upon auto failure and set your power settings to boot it back up upon power restore).