Shutting down Mac mini

Remote desktop or a free vnc or teamviwer

There is really no need to shut it down. Cold starts and restarting are harder on the hardware, than just letting it stay on or go into (standby) sleep mode.

FWIWmy Mac Mini's sleep 24/7 when they are not in use and only get restarted for OS X upgrades.

A bit involved just to shutdown... But if you want to go headless configure "sshd" on the Mac mini.. Configure "ssh" access to the Mac mini. Then you could shell into the Mac and run the "shutdown" command..

man ssh

man sshd

man shutdown

These are standard tools included with OS.

Power on the Mac using the physical power button.

It should wake when you go to access your music.

Problem is, we are not sure about your connections or setup....?

Dimitris791971 wrote:

HHow will I wake it up since I won't have any monitor in front of me,because like I said earlier will be using it only as a music server?

You can setup your Mac Mini with Screen Sharing enabled from System Preferences/Sharing. And set it to Never sleep via System Preferences/Energy Saver/Computer Sleep.

With Screen Sharing you can use any other Mac to view your Mac Mini by using Finder/Go/Connect to Server and type in vnc://ip address of mac mini (e.g vnc://192.168.1.2). Once you connect to your Mac Mini, you will be able to restart it, shut it down and do whatever you want as if you were actually in front of it with a monitor.

With the Energy Saving setting to NEVER sleep your Mac Mini, it won't go into sleep mode so it would be available for you to screen share.

For a headless server, you should check the following boxes in energy saver:

1. Put hard disks to sleep when possible

2. Wake for Ethernet network access

3. Start up automatically after power failure

Setting (1) just saves wear and tear on the HDDs when not in use and only adds a few seconds

to connections time.

Setting (2) allows you to sleep the computer and it will wake on network access.

If you do not have the server on a UPS, (3) is just a good idea.

In addition to the above, in the advanced settings, you can set it up to automatically wake and

sleep. So, you could have it wake in the morning and have it sleep at night when you would likely not

need access, although if need be, you could wake it by just accessing over network if (2) is checked.

Personally, I have a 2010 Mini (headless) that I am using for a file server and as my "Primary iTunes" library with

Home Sharing setup. I have it and all connected drives plugged into a UPS (along with my cable modem

and Airport Extreme Base Station). I have both (2) and (3) enabled (should the UPS battery eventually

run out. I don't sleep the Mini itself since I have set many periodic tasks, automatic downloads, etc.

that occur throughout the day. But with the drives put to sleep, the Mini itself will draw very little

power, so leaving it powered 24/7 is not much of an issue.

Accessing my Mini, I simply use Screen Sharing from my other Macs And I control all other sharing

using the OS X Server app.

If you get the screen sharing going you could invoke the "shutdown" at a terminal for a complete power off when you want that.

You might have to do a "sudo shutdown".. "sudo" just asserts your Administrative rights for the "shutdown" command..

Or I guess the shutdown from the Apple Menu probably works great too. 😁