Small Home Server?

[Norman Gray]

On 20 Jul 2007, at 03:53, Michael J Wise wrote:

> On Jul 19, 2007, at 11:09 AM, Jerry LeVan wrote:
>
>> Would the mac mini be sturdy enough to handle this sort of work?
>
> Oh yes.
> I like to think of it as the iServe.

I think the MacMini would be fine.  I use a Mini for this sort of  
purpose (actually, I underuse it, because it's off most of the time).

Mine draws 9.6W idle with the wireless off, and 13W with it on, and  
it's quite quiet, so it's good for this sort of purpose.

>> Will it boot/run without a monitor or keyboard?
>
> Yes, although you may have to "Fool" it in the monitor department.

No problem, and no fooling.  It boots headless and keyboardless  
without any extra configuration.

>> Would doing maintenance work on  the mini be painful
>> ( seems like I could boot it from the mbp using firewire...)

It's not a major problem, though it's unfortunately not trivial.

There's an OS X Server Admin manual[1] which is a very useful  
reference for this, but unfortunaly most of the really useful stuff  
is available only in OS X Server, and not in the client one, so a bit  
of digging is occasionally called for.  If I recall correctly, the  
simplest way I could persuade myself that wireless was actually  
switched off was by plugging in a monitor and looking at the little  
triangle....

All the best,

Norman


[1] http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/Command_Line_v10.4.pdf

-- 
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Norman Gray  :  http://nxg.me.uk
eurovotech.org  :  University of Leicester, UK