mac-mini-home-server/

[utterances-bot]

A Mac mini as a home server | Aaron Parker

Setting up macOS on a Mac mini M1 as a home server.

https://stealthpuppy.com/mac-mini-home-server/

[END100END]

The brief is awesome and very complete. I am using the same setup - an M1 MacMini, external SSD, etc. as a home server. Wish I had more memory but it works surprisingly well.

Recommendation

Although you are pretty clear on almost everything, one of the most critical settings is too vague. that is the "System Settings / Energy". I think this is the problem I have been having and I think I have changed it per your recommendation and that will fix my problems.

I have been running Lyrion (formerly Logitech Media Server - LMS) with much better result on my M1 server than any RaspberryPi or other solution that I have tried. However, now that I have added some docker containers via OrbStack, those dockers have been hanging up (unlike the Lyrion server). I am pretty sure I had the Energy settings wrong - I thought all the key switches were in the DIsplay settings. Making what I think are the correct settings in Energy seems to have fixed my problem.

For the record, here is what I have Energy set to:
Low Power Mode off
Prevent automatic sleeping when the display is off on
Put hard disks to sleep when possible off
Wake on network access on
Start up automatically after a power failure on

Great stuff. Thanks again.

[cfa532]

What a great article. All of a sudden I have a spare MacMini with M1 chip as server. Your article is the lamp on my feet. I do have a question unanswered yet. What is the recommended OS? Tahoe is a no no. The MacMini became spare becuse I updated it to Tahoe and abhorred it.

[aaronparker]

I'm running Tahoe on my M1 OK so far. If you don't want to use Tahoe, I would recommend Sequoia, particularly if you have client machines running Sequoia or above.

[JayBrown]

Very good article – thank you! I've ordered an M4 (non-pro) Mac Mini to use as a home server/NAS. Idle power draw was the factor for me, and I also want to avoid x86, whenever I can, even though TrueNAS & Unraid are pretty sweet. My plan is to use an external Thunderbolt 4 or USB4 M.2 enclosure, take the lid off, add an M.2-to-6xSATA adapter (ASM1166 chipset), and attach 6 SATA SSDs in an IcyDock enclosure to run as a 24 TB RAID5 using OWC's SoftRAID. (Additional power will come from a 90W PicoPSU.) Afaik, auto-boot doesn't work on a Mac, if the machine was shut down properly. Auto-reboot only works when there is an unexpected power loss. So you can't add a smart plug, switch off the power, and then on again, and the Mac will boot. So I'll do two things: (1) buy one of these cheap power switch gadgets – https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0F3HYF5LW/ –, add a Zigbee SwitchBot on top, power the SwitchBot with a CR2 battery eliminator, and then I can remotely power on the Mac, even after a proper shutdown. (2) As a fallback, if for some reason the smart home has some hickups, I will use pmset to set the Mac to auto-boot once a day. PS – regarding the comment by @aaronparker: I'd suggest not using Tahoe. A server needs to be rock solid, so I would generally always stick to the previous system version, currently Sequoia, because those tend to run pretty stable at higher minor versions, and then wait until the current macOS is stable in late summer/fall one year later. As for Tahoe, some users say that it's one of the worst macOS releases ever, on a par with the likes of Lion and Big Sur, and they will skip macOS 26 altogether and wait for macOS 27, unless by some miracle Tahoe eventually turns out to be solid at the end. So I expect not to update Sequoia until the fall of 2027. PPS – regarding the comment by @END100END: I haven't researched this a lot, but I think I agree to disable "Put hard disks to sleep when possible". I don't know about HDDs, but enabling this can apparently lead to serious strain on SSDs, unless you use expensive enterprise-grade models. SSDs have a low power draw at idle, anyway, so I don't think there's any need to put them to sleep for power reasons.

[aaronparker]

@JayBrown I bought a JetKVM a couple of months back and using it for remote management of my Mac server now. It include WoL capabilities so that I can remotely start the Mac if I need to.

[JayBrown]

@aaronparker Yes, I plan to get a JetKVM too… already have a KVM switch for local access to all the homelab machines. In the end it would be: Tailscale exit node + JetKVM + KVM switch. 👍 WoL should definitely be part of the setup, and it's an easy way to wake the Mac server, unless it's in safe sleep (deep hibernation). But—and please correct me if I'm wrong—, it's different from booting the Mac from a shutdown state. I don't expect to ever really shut down my Mac, becaue it's supposed to be a server, after all, but if it ever were to wind up in a completely (and gracefully) shut down state, and if I don't have physical access, I would want a solution for that scenario, too, even though it's highly unlikely.

[aaronparker]

I'm not certain on the differences, but I could test. Mine runs 24/7 too.

[JayBrown]

Yeah. The test would be to select "Shut Down…" from the Apple menu in the UI, wait until the Mac has completely shut down. After that, two tests are possible: (a) try Wake-on-LAN, which shouldn't work because the Mac is powered off completely, and can't receive or listen for magic packets; (b) while shut down, unplug the Mac's power cord from the wall, wait a few seconds, then plug it back in. (Or use a smart plug to manage main power off/on.) According to info I've read online, this should not make the Mac auto-boot again, which apparently only works after a power loss, i.e. after an improper shutdown. This is one of the downsides of using a Mac. On x86 machines, you can set a server to auto-boot once it receives power from the wall, so it's easy to control with a smart plug. With a Mac that's been properly shut down, we seem to need actual physical access to boot it up again.

[aaronparker]

Unfortunately it doesn't work - WOL magic packet to a powered off Mac doesn't work. I'v also realised that if the Mac is off, the USB ports aren't powered like they would be on PC, so the JetKVM is also powered off.

[JayBrown]

General note: I recommend enabling WiFi if you use the Mac Server as a device in Apple Home. I use my Mac Mini Server to also run acasa Controller for HomeKit in Hub Mode, and it's simply way too slow, even when connected via 10G ethernet, because smart homes have a lot of WiFi-only devices including e.g. Thread border routers like the HomePod. So WiFi is a plus here, because otherwise the router would have to bridge multicast traffic, which introduces latency. You just have to order your network devices in System Settings > Network > ··· (3-dot menu) in the lower right corner > Set Service Order. The fastest network device, in my case the 10G ethernet, should be in the number 1 spot.

[aaronparker]

I've been finding that the system would become unresponsive with WiFi disabled, so I have it enabled in mine.

[JayBrown]

Another thing to note: if you set up an external drive as a Time Machine network share on your Mac Server, there are two important things that (to my knowledge) even Apple doesn't talk about on their support pages. (1) It does not seem possible to share the volume root as the Time Machine destination, i.e. you have to create a directory in the root of the external SSD's volume, and share that directory in System Settings for the Time Machine client(s). Make sure that the directory has the right permission: CMD-I in Finder, scroll down in the Info window, and under "Sharing and Permissions" it should list your user at the top, which should be the default admin user, then (usually) "staff" and "everyone". (2) As a second step, i.e. after the directory creation, you have to open the Info window (CMD-I) for the actual SSD volume, then scroll down to the very bottom, click the lock icon, and disable (untick) "Ignore ownership on this volume". Time Machine often doesn't work well on volumes that have this setting enabled. (Backing up might work fine, but restoring can fail with regard to file permissions.) In the Sharing & Permissions list, it would then (usually) list "system", "wheel" and "everyone". After that you can follow the normal & documented steps of enabling a Time Machine network share in System Settings. An app to speed this up is Backup Server Control by Marcel Bresink. On the client Macs, make sure that the file /etc/smb.conf isn't configured to restrict SMB to a specific version. If you use a third-party Time Machine indexer like Backup Loupe by Robby Pählig (SomaZone), auto-indexing doesn't work on a NAS, so you need to occasionally SMB-mount the Time Machine share and the enclosed sparsebundle, which you can automate, e.g. once a day with a user LaunchAgent and a shell script, which uses the security command to read the Time Machine server password ("internet-password") from the login keychain, runs mount volume with the credentials, and launches the indexer app, e.g. with osascript or a simple open, which (if all goes well) would then start indexing automatically.

[manojdhimann]

My setup is similar to yours, but my network provider doesn’t provide a static IP. To solve this, I set up a Cloudflare Tunnel — and it turned out to be a game changer. It improved security, and now I can access my Mac mini from anywhere in the world. I’m using the Mac mini to run my LLM.

[JayBrown]

Tailscale is also a great option. Directly ssh into the Mac, or use the Mac (or a Raspberry Pi) as an exit node, use VNC to access VMs running on the Mini etc. I'll definitely set this up, including a PiKVM. I'll probably also just use public tailscale URLs for guest access to Jellyfin, Seafile, calibre server etc. (But I also have TLD reserved, if I want to go that route.) As for an LLM, I though about it too, but I went against it. When the M10 Mac Mini with 128 GB RAM comes out, I'll probably give it a spin. 😉

[manojdhimann]

I'm currently struggling with an issue.🥲 If there's a power failure at my place, my Mac mini shuts down, and after the power comes back on, it doesn't start automatically. There's an option on the Mac mini for automatic startup after a power failure, but it's not working either. 💻 If anyone knows a solution for this, please help. 🙏