How to keep a headless Mac mini happy

[The Blackfriars Communication data center server room, er, shelf]

We here at Blackfriars, in rebellion against our email-restricting Web hosting overlords, started running our own mail server this year on a Mac mini supported by an external Firewire RAID array. We love this server setup, but one of the challenges is running the Mac mini without a display connected to it. The system boots OK, but when I try to connect to the console with our favorite remote windowing client, Chicken of the VNC, we see a host of wavy lines, as if the display adapter has selected the wrong display size and frequency (which it probably has).

The root of this problem is that the Mac mini was never really designed to run "headless." It expects a display to be connected to it, and when it doesn't see one, it selects the most recent display resolution, which typically is not the one Chicken of the VNC expects. The result: funny lines.

I tried just plugging in a DVI-VGA display adapter, but that didn't convince the mini that there was a display there. So I trotted down to Radio Shack and bought 5 100 ohm resistors for $0.99, and used one of them to pull the Green Analog display line on the DVI connector (that's pin C2 for those of you playing along at home -- you can look at the pinouts here at interfacebus.com.) to the Analog return (that's pin C5). The result looks like this:



Now, we can remotely control our Mac mini from anywhere without annoying display sync problems. Further, our teeth are whiter and we've eliminated the embarrassment of static cling. Those last bits may not be true, but this little hack does work nicely.

One final note: in the process of shooting the photos for this entry, I cleverly managed to take one of our Firewire RAID disks offline. Boy was that a mistake. The RAID array got out of sync, so I'm now in the process of rebuilding the disk that I accidentally powered off. In the process, I discovered this handy Apple support document titled, "Mac OS X: How to rebuild a software RAID mirror" which handily tells you how to rebuild your RAID array disks from the command line when Disk Utility won't do it for you. It's another nice to know detail when things start going awry.

This geeky Apple moment was brought to you by Blackfriars. We now return you to our regular marketing prattle.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Chicken of the VNC, DVI, Headless Mac, Mac mini, problem solving, Firewire, RAID, Technology