Lion client on 2011 Mini Server.

[jerrah]

I recently purchased a 2.0 i7 Mac Mini server and have read a few posts about people wishing to install the Lion (non-server) OS on it. There appeared to be no resolution without some trickery.

Using my C2D Air I downloaded 10.7.3 from the App store, viewed the install contents to grab the DMG, restored the DMG to a USB and installed onto the Mac Mini server.

No issues - booted straight into the client OS and no complaints about installing on the Server hardware.

I hope this assists others who were experiencing difficulties.

I have installed 8GB of RAM and I find it rips along in Aperture. Very happy with the machine.

 

[philipma1957]

I recently purchased a 2.0 i7 Mac Mini server and have read a few posts about people wishing to install the Lion (non-server) OS on it. There appeared to be no resolution without some trickery.

Using my C2D Air I downloaded 10.7.3 from the App store, viewed the install contents to grab the DMG, restored the DMG to a USB and installed onto the Mac Mini server.

No issues - booted straight into the client OS and no complaints about installing on the Server hardware.

I hope this assists others who were experiencing difficulties.

I have installed 8GB of RAM and I find it rips along in Aperture. Very happy with the machine.

yeah you can install lion to a server legally if you own a 2010 mac mini or any snow mac. pay for down load lion with the snow mac and install it to an external hdd. boot your server with the hdd and pick the restore feature restore the standard lion to the server and I am 95 percent sure what you did is legal. If I am wrong please forgive me as I am not a lawyer.


if you use a mac that came with lion not legal since you did not pay for the osx. I have servers with the standard osx and the server osx one one each hdd.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Why bother?

The license for OS X that came with the "server" Mac doesn't allow that OS X Server license to be transferred, it can only be used on the Mac it came on; and if you just don't turn on any of the Server functionality, it is identical to the "client" version of OS X. (Almost all of the Server functionality is already present in the "client" version of OS X, it just doesn't have the pretty GUI to manage it.)

 

[jackrv]

OS X Server is just a set of apps. There is no need to reinstall. If you don't turn on the server apps, it is exactly the same OS as Lion. OS X Server is like iLife being bundled with OS X.

 

[jerrah]

Why bother?

Why not? I don't need another server in the house - I bought it for the quad core. I posted the information because it was a commonly asked question on the forums that nobody had answered.

I've changed the HDD storage configuration from the factory so I had to reinstall - why put something on that I'm not going to use?

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Why not? I don't need another server in the house - I bought it for the quad core. I posted the information because it was a commonly asked question on the forums that nobody had answered.

I've changed the HDD storage configuration from the factory so I had to reinstall - why put something on that I'm not going to use?

The why bother is why bother with the effort when there is no technical difference? Your Mac came with an OS that is functionally identical to the "client" OS, plus some added bits that don't do anything if you don't activate them. It's fast-and-easy to reload the OS it came with, a bit harder to to the work to get another copy of the OS on there.