Headless Mac Mini: SLOOOOOOOW!

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by BrewDrinkRepeat, May 29, 2017.

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  1. BrewDrinkRepeat

    BrewDrinkRepeat Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Merchantville NJ
    I have a Mac Mini that I use as my music server. Works great, except for how slow it is using any sort of RDC / Apple Screen Sharing to control it from my laptop. It's beyond slow, almost to the point of being unusable at times.

    I've tried keeping it plugged in to my plasma (even if not actually viewing the screen) and buying one of those special HDMI adapters to plug into the video port to fool the Mini into thinking it was connected to a monitor.

    This sped things up sometimes, but not all the time -- the slowdown is actually very inconsistent, sometimes just as bad as before, but sometimes it's virtually as fast as working directly on the machine. Drives me crazy... it shouldn't be this slow.

    Anyone have any experience resolving this type of issue?

    Edit: the Mini is on Ethernet, not wifi. I have not tried with my laptop also on Ethernet, I will as soon as I can but that's obviously not convenient for how I want to use this setup...
     
  2. Bingo Bongo

    Bingo Bongo Music gives me Eargasms

    Location:
    Ottawa, Canada
    Maybe its time for a restore?????
     
  3. Rolltide

    Rolltide Forum Resident

    Location:
    Vallejo, CA
    Instead of using screen sharing, I'd use a tailored remote app for the media player you use. That HDMI gizmo is likely making things worse, as its intended purpose is to allow for higher resolutions for remote desktop, which requires more resources and thus slower performance. You want the resolution as low as possible.
     
    HiFi Guy likes this.
  4. gryphongryph

    gryphongryph Forum Resident

    Location:
    Faroe Islands
    What are your spec on the Mac mini ?
     
  5. BrewDrinkRepeat

    BrewDrinkRepeat Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Merchantville NJ
    Thanks guys!

    @Bingo Bongo: it's a fresh setup, I just picked it up and set up everything from scratch.

    @Rolltide: I do use the iPhone remote app to play music; my need to work directly on the system is for "admin" stuff (adding/modifying the library, updating tags, building playlists, etc). As to the resolution thing, the dummy HDMI "load" is supposed to enable the GPU acceleration which is supposed to speed things up. (Emphasis on supposed to...!) And, it was FAR worse w/out it, at any screen resolution. :( From what I've read this is a known issue with the Mac Mini, that the GPU is not enabled when it's running headless, hence me trying to keep it connected to the TV and/or the dummy load adapter.

    @gryphongryph: it's an older Mini, picked up from Mac Of All Trades. 2.26GHz Intel Core Duo, 2GB RAM, OS X 10.9.5. Speed is just fine when I work on it using my plasma and a Bluetooth keyboard, but that limits me to the living room couch. It would be much more convenient to be able to use my laptop and RDC/Screen Sharing so I can do this work from anywhere, or while I'm watching something on TV.
     
  6. Sckott

    Sckott Hand Tighten Only.

    Location:
    South Plymouth, Ma
  7. gryphongryph

    gryphongryph Forum Resident

    Location:
    Faroe Islands
    2 GB of ram is on the low side I would think, but not sure it would be the problem for your usage, can you increase the ram? Ram is cheap these days and would make OS X run much better.
     
  8. timind

    timind phorum rezident

    I forget the names, but I used two different screen sharing apps on my 2010 mini. I had the same experience as the OP and gave up. To be fair though, I tried to do all manipulation with my phone.
     
  9. HiFi Guy

    HiFi Guy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Lakeland, FL
    This. I use Audirvana on my Mini and its associated remote with my iPad. I have it set up up start Audirvana at power up so I don't have to use my monitor at all. Works perfectly.
     
  10. BrewDrinkRepeat

    BrewDrinkRepeat Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Merchantville NJ
    Yeah, 2GB seems low by modern standards but the machine runs fine on its own. To be clear (and I know my own subject line is poorly worded, sorry!) it is only using screen-sharing / RDC that things slow to a crawl (and inconsistently* at that!). When I'm working on the machine directly (using a keyboard and my plasma TV for display) things are fine.

    @HiFi Guy: I cannot do what I need to do using a remote app; Apple's own Remote app is fine for selecting ad playing music, but not for working in iTunes (adding / removing songs, modifying metadata, creating playlists, moving stuff on/off of my iPhone, etc.).

    It's frustrating... aside of this issue everything else about using a Mac Mini as a music server is perfect -- small footprint, optical out to my DAC, plenty of ports for external HDs, quiet (no fans, etc.), OS X and iTunes, so on...

    * This is actually the most confusing bit... sometimes it works just fine, perfectly responsive. But then other times it crawls, the screen lags tens of seconds behind my mouse movements and clicks / keystrokes. If it was always like this it would be one thing, but the fact that it sometimes runs just fine tells me it should be capable of doing so all the time. Something else is going on, I just haven't figured out what.
     
  11. smctigue

    smctigue Forum Resident

    I would suggest running Activity Monitor to see where your RAM usage is. I would guess that 2GB is on the razor edge and some combination of background processes and running applications may cause the slow downs. My 2014 (4GB) runs fine via Screen Sharing or VNC.
     
    gryphongryph likes this.
  12. Jack Flannery

    Jack Flannery Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    I use Splashtop. I access my Mini music server via iPad and Mac Pro via MBP. Works fine. You need to get more friggin ram. If it runs so fine then why is it so slow? Graphics memory uses RAM. Upgrade is dirt cheap.
     
  13. mdelrossi

    mdelrossi Forum Resident

    Location:
    Brooklyn nyc
    How does the mini access the network?
    Ive got mine hardwired to gigabit ethernet. Is there a lag ? Yes but its normal, and useable.
    late 2009, 8gbram, SSD, screen resolution 1280x1024. Screen sharing on iMac: Scaling on, Adaptive quality

    I use Screens on my iPad to access the desktop remotely.
     
  14. BayouTiger

    BayouTiger Forum Resident

    I find that Splashtop works much better than screen sharing.

    I also find that AppleRemote Desktop app works better than Screen sharing. Not sure why it would be different as it is just a VNC client in theory.
     
  15. rtrt

    rtrt Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    I've experienced something similar from a mac laptop into Mac Pro in the past, whilst I was able remote into an old iMac G5 and other mac laptops from the same mac laptop without any issues at all. I could actually experience the problem without any apps running on the Mac Pro - for example I was able to see it whilst using the Mac Pro finder to copy files around. It was a while ago and it didn't cause me a big enough problem to investigate fully, but because it was a relatively powerful desktop I pretty much decided it was unlikely to be CPU or Memory.

    The above not helpful I know - so some other unstructured thoughts;

    Not sure if your laptop is Windows or Mac?

    If both Mac then open Console app on both machines and try to correlate slowdowns with specific activities on either machine. You can use the timestamps to look after the fact, if the slowdown prevents you checking immediately.

    If laptop is windows then presumably you're using some VNC app - might be worth trying another to rule out incompatibilities? I don't know if there's a Windows equivalent to Console but if there is -it might be worth monitoring there.

    I'm not sure 2G RAM is necessarily a problem - suspect it depends on a lot of things. Maybe run the Mini with only your music app or no app at all running to try to rule out memory issues - monitoring the Minis usage - see below.

    Above someone mentions Activity Monitor to look at RAM - you also can see if CPU spikes and the app hogging CPU. As an alternate you could maybe install something like Menu Meters - you can monitor RAM, CPU, Network etc from menu bar in real time - still need to look at Activity monitor for the detail though.

    If you hadn't mentioned the headless mac / no screen attached issue I would have suggested that. Is it possible that when your TV is fully off that the Mini 'cant tell' its connected to a screen? I know thats not true for a PC monitor -but maybe your tv is different. Could you try a PC monitor connected temporarily?
     
  16. jtw

    jtw Forum Resident

    Any more suggestions or ideas? I want to use a recently inherited mac mini as a music server. What's the latest and greatest suggestion for using my iPhone to control iTunes so that I don't need a keyboard or monitor?
     
  17. jbmcb

    jbmcb Forum Resident

    Location:
    Troy, MI, USA
  18. McLover

    McLover Senior Member

    Major issues here. Core Duo CPU, by modern standards slow. 2GB RAM is very little RAM as well. That machine is also trying to run a modern MacOS which doesn't help. You need a faster, newer Mac which can run the modern OS better, and has adequate RAM, 4GB good, 8GB better.
     
  19. elvisizer

    elvisizer Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Jose
    Dear lord, 2 gb of ram means you’re probably paging to disk with just the os running! Even 4 gb is too little really...
     
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