A screenshot of screen sharing where I am controlling one Mac remotely from another.
Over Memorial Day weekend I tried installing Linux Mint XFCE on the 2012 Mac Mini, paired with a new OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual — a dual-bay external enclosure that holds two 3.5″ drives.
Mercury Elite Pro Dual — the repository of our digital life
My aim was to build a family server so that I could gather and organize the past 30+ years of our digital life. I want to get it all together; separate the wheat from the chaff and create a separate offsite backup of the good stuff for safekeeping. I bought the Mercury new because I didn’t want to risk vintage equipment on this one. Getting a reliable server together has been a long-overdue project.
What was supposed to be a straightforward setup turned into a lengthy detour. The Mercury wouldn’t cooperate properly with Linux, so after dealing with the compatibility headaches I wiped the SSD and installed Catalina — an old but compatible Apple operating system for the 2012 Mini. It just works. SMB shares are solid, screen sharing is smooth, and it’s running quietly as the family server.
Dummy Plug (Yep, that’s its name.}
I’m using a dummy plug in the HDMI port so the Mini runs completely headless — no monitor, keyboard, or mouse attached. The dummy plug tricks the computer into thinking everything is present, and it quietly goes about its work serving files. If I need to make adjustments or do any maintenance, I can just connect via Screen Share from another Mac on the network.
It’s not the direction I originally planned, but the old Mini is doing the job without drama. I was hoping to future proof it with a modern Linux installation, but as it says in the ads, the Apple just works. This will do nicely.
It all seems to be working so I am slowly migrating the art files over. I am now facing the daunting task of organizing all of this stuff. What do we need? What needs to be reviewed? What should go into cold storage? It will be an evolving process.
This home stretch is more of a marathon.
The infrastructure is in place and it is past time to return to the real work whether it is pixels or pigments. I have to stop with the constant tweaking and use these machines as tools that they are meant to be. It’s time to move on and start filling this server with actual work
(Boy, am I glad I never got into video.)
It will take twice as long, at the minimum… 🙂