Mac Mini Media Center - woes with Lion, Plex, and Remote Management

[VirtualRain]

I wonder if anyone has tried this and is either having a better time of it than I am or suffering the same issues.

I have a 2010 Mac Mini that I use as a Media Center. It runs 24/7 and when I'm not using it for running Plex to watch movies, it may be downloading stuff in the background. I have a couple of large HD's connected via FW800 for media storage.

It was working fine under Snow Leopard.

I was drawn to Lion because of the ability for remote management login's via a different account. So I installed Lion and setup Plex to run in the default admin account (Named "Plex"). Then I setup another user admin account "Chris" for remote management purposes. The intent was to keep Plex running so that whenever the TV was turned on, the Plex UI would be available. And, if I wanted to login and do some management, I could do that via the "Chris" account without disturbing the Plex UI.

It seemed like a great idea. However, it's been nothing but problems. It seems that the new remote login capability, does not play well with Plex running on a separate account in the background - a remote login on "Chris" will invariably lock up "Plex". And even the remote login feature is flaky sometimes - not connecting. I've had to restart the Mini since installing Lion more times than I care to count. Whereas under SL, it would run 24/7 for weeks at a time. I think I'm going to have to go back to running everything from one account, and/or even roll-back to SL.

Anyone else tried this? What are your findings?

 

[tbayrgs]

I wonder if anyone has tried this and is either having a better time of it than I am or suffering the same issues.

I have a 2010 Mac Mini that I use as a Media Center. It runs 24/7 and when I'm not using it for running Plex to watch movies, it may be downloading stuff in the background. I have a couple of large HD's connected via FW800 for media storage.

It was working fine under Snow Leopard.

I was drawn to Lion because of the ability for remote management login's via a different account. So I installed Lion and setup Plex to run in the default admin account (Named "Plex"). Then I setup another user admin account "Chris" for remote management purposes. The intent was to keep Plex running so that whenever the TV was turned on, the Plex UI would be available. And, if I wanted to login and do some management, I could do that via the "Chris" account without disturbing the Plex UI.

It seemed like a great idea. However, it's been nothing but problems. It seems that the new remote login capability, does not play well with Plex running on a separate account in the background - a remote login on "Chris" will invariably lock up "Plex". And even the remote login feature is flaky sometimes - not connecting. I've had to restart the Mini since installing Lion more times than I care to count. Whereas under SL, it would run 24/7 for weeks at a time. I think I'm going to have to go back to running everything from one account, and/or even roll-back to SL.

Anyone else tried this? What are your findings?

The difficulties I experiences trying to connect to my Mac Mini via screen sharing with Lion installed was the sole reason I rolled back to SL--far too much hassle so for the time being I'm staying with SL.

I'll certainly be interested to see if you get it figured out as that setup would be ideal for me as well.

 

[VirtualRain]

This is a common problem it seems. There's a thread on the Plex forums about it.

 

[CorporateFelon]

This is a common problem it seems. There's a thread on the Plex forums about it.

Wow, I had planned on doing this exact same set up. I'm glad I have not pulled the trigger yet.

Looks like I'm holding off on buying Lion for a little while longer.

 

[Sodner]

The difficulties I experiences trying to connect to my Mac Mini via screen sharing with Lion installed was the sole reason I rolled back to SL--far too much hassle so for the time being I'm staying with SL.

I'll certainly be interested to see if you get it figured out as that setup would be ideal for me as well.

I bought a Mac mini to play with Lion Server and the difficulties with screen sharing and even with "target display mode" off my iMac forced me to return it. It was infuriating! Then I figured this cannot be how an Apple product works. So I bought another one figuring it had to be a hardware issue. Same thing. So it to went back too.
Good to hear I'm not alone with experiencing this problem.

 

[Taz Mangus]

Wow, I had planned on doing this exact same set up. I'm glad I have not pulled the trigger yet.

Looks like I'm holding off on buying Lion for a little while longer.

I use XBMC on 2009 Mac-Mini running Lion 10.7.1. I am able to use screen sharing to my Mac-Mini (virtual desktop) while XBMC is running and it does not lock up XBMC.

 

[VirtualRain]

A quick update... positive results using Plex set to "true" full screen mode. I posted the full story on the Plex thread I linked to above.