mac mini 2011 server sleep issue

Hi,

Same problem here on the new mac mini server with 500GB disks running Lion 10.7.1.

The display sleeps, but the mini itself won't. It won't spin down the harddisks either, even with the "Put the harddisks to sleep when possible" preference set.

Haven't found a solution yet.

Same here... initially I thought there might be some compatibilty problems with dell u3011 display (connected through displayport), which was also new, but its clear that this is not an isolated issue..... Apple needs to fix this...

A couple things, a server is pretty much meant not to

sleep. Do or did you have all server functions turned off?

Any of them may have some ability of setting a flag

somewhere to prevent sleep.

I have a new Mini Server that I use for a workstation

(turned off server function). I never sleep the Mini

as I always shut down. Only sleep my display if

I'm only going to be gone for a short time. However,

on one of those occasions, I accidentally hit the key

combo to put the computer to sleep instaed of display

sleep and the Mini Server did in fact go into sleep.

When I returned later, I saw the little LED pulsing

indicating sleep. It was a bummer since I wanted the

thing to clone while I was gone. But the point is it

did sleep.

I don't recall doing anything special when setting up

but it did sleep, much to my dismay (kicked myself

for the screwup).

Message was edited by: woodmeister50 BTW, just tried the Sleep from the Apple menu and it went right to sleep. I looked through all the Preferences and didn't see anything different than on my other Macs. So the new Mini Server can sleep. Perhaps it may have been the fact that when I started up the very first time I did not enable any of the server services. Other than that I know I didn't do anything special.

I had the same sleep problem with my mid-2011 mini server (could put it to sleep manually from the Apple menu, but it would not spotaneously sleep per the Energy Saver settings).

I verified with the Genius Bar that this is by design with Lion Server. So I downloaded the non-server version of Lion on another Mac and created a bootable thumb drive to install that version on my mini server.

With the standard Lion my mini server now sleeps spontaneiously per the Energy Saver settings.

Not sure how you did that. If you use the retail version of Lion it won't install on one of the new Minis as they use the new boot firmware. Or rather, you can install it on another Mac but you get the red stop sign when trying to boot that on the Mini.

If you try and download it on the Mini, you get the server version and have no choice.

So how did you use another Mac? I can see that you could create a restore drive using another Mac, but that doesn't contain a full version of Lion, it's just the installer.

Please explain.

I have a MacBook running Snow Leopard. I downloaded Lion from the Mac App Store on the MacBook, then instead of running the installer, I followed the directions from my last post to create a bootable thumb drive. This results in 3.85GB of files on the thumb drive.

Next I shut down the mini server, plugged in the thumb drive, and started it up, holding the option key when I heard the startup chime. When the startup options were displayed I chose my thumb drive as the startup drive.

This loads the Mac OS Utilities menu. I used disk utility from this menu to format the server HD. Then I used the reinstall Mac OS X option to install Lion from the thumb drive.

That's it. Lion standard edition running on my server. I've had zero problems.

Very strange. I did exactly that too. My Mini ran the installer from the thumb drive without issue, but when the machine restarted I got the red circle stop sign. Doing a search reveals that's also what happens to other people trying the same thing.

Could you confirm that your Mini is one of the 2011 models that use Internet recovery in EFI as those cannot use the method you've just outlined - Apple seem to have blocked it according to other posters and that's certainly my expeience of trying to do what you've done.

Yes, my mini is the mid-2011 model. Without using the thumb drive it would do Internet recovery.

I chose to do this myself, but my local Apple Store had said that I could bring my Mac in and they would wipe the drive and install the non-server version. If you're stumped, maybe your store will do the same?

Well since it worked for you, and you have the same Mini as I do, you've motivated me to give it another go as I clearly got something wrong!

I need to re-install anyway as Facetime will not authenticate, which is a known issue if you restore from a backup or clone your machine onto a new drive. In my case I put an SSD in place of one of the HDs and cloned the existing installation which has broken Facetime so I need to sort that in any event.

Looks like it's time to bite the bullet and reinstall Lion! This feels horribly like Windows-land though 😟

Yes, with the whole default to Internet restore and no physical disk provided it was definitely a hassle. Shouldn't have to hack our computer to reinstall the OS 😟 Good luck!

You should find with 10.7.3 that this problem is finally solved. Excellent!

My mini 2011 running Lion Server now spontaneously goes to sleep as it should always have done; works perfectly every time.

Well and truly happy now.......