othyn/unraid_mac_mini.md

## unraid_mac_mini.md

      
    Raw
  

              unraid_mac_mini.md
            
          
    Mac mini (late 2012, 6,2) Unraid Setup & Installation / Configuration Log

I'm creating this as reference for people looking to run Unraid on a Mac mini, as there really isn't any info about this online. In this case, I'm running an MD388LL/A model (6,2), an Intel based model running an Intel i7-3615QM @ 2.3GHz with 16GB DDR3 1600MHz memory. In terms of drives, I'm currently running the original 120GB Apple re-badged SSD and 1TB Apple re-badged HDD which are both near EoL.
For the USB drive I'm using an old spare USB 2.0 Kingston 32GB DataTraveler 104. Space wise, its completely overkill, but I don't have any other spares to hand given my others have been used up on two other Unraid boxes. As for USB 2.0, I've had more success on 2.0 drives than 3+.
p.s. I know there is no installation step, just trying to get good SEO for this post to help wanderers!
Running into issues...

At the time of writing the latest Next release of Unraid is 6.10.0-rc2. It's a shame I couldn't get this working, as both my other boxes are quite happily running that release, there are things that I'd like to make use of, but it will have to wait.
I want to make clear that I've spent a good day or so on this trying to get some combination of things working. The main issues I ran into were;

Hanging boots after boot selection (holding Alt during boot)

Each time this occurred (which was the majority) I had to hard reboot and keep trying to boot from the USB stick, it would usually boot within 5-60 seconds, its highly random and can take an age to go from post to OS boot
Not sure if it is of use, but I could only get display output using DisplayPort (DP) and setting my monitors DP version to 1.1
I couldn't find and repeat behaviour which would be the cause of this or how I can reliably get the USB to boot


Kernel panics due to the following error:

VFS: Cannot open root device "(null)" or unknown-block(0,0): error -6
Please append a correct "root=" boot option;

In which there was a post on the Unraid forums about this, with OP trying to boot a Mac Pro 1,1. The suggested fix was also posted to a different Unraid forum thread in which it stated to do the following:

... On the flash drive edit syslinux/syslinux.cfg and add root=sda to every boot option after initrd=/bzroot, e.g.:

label Unraid OS
   menu default
   kernel /bzimage
   append initrd=/bzroot root=sda

Although this did not work for me.
Gettings things working!

At the time of writing the latest Stable release of Unraid is 6.9.2, this is what I ended up using as it was the only thing I could get booting.
A note on getting the USB to boot, I still experienced hanging boots after boot selection (holding Alt during boot). Each time this occurred (which was the majority) I had to hard reboot and keep trying to boot from the USB stick, it would usually boot within 5-60 seconds, its highly random and can take an age to go from post to OS boot. I couldn't find and repeat behaviour which would be the cause of this or how I can reliably get the USB to boot.
It really was as simple as writing the USB for Stable version 6.9.2 via the Unraid USB Flash Creator, then booting it as normal and going through a prototypical Unraid setup and configuration.
As for headless boot, works fine from my experience. Just the USB stick, ethernet and power plugged in. It takes anywhere from 5-60 seconds for Apple's UEFI to boot automatically from the USB, but as there is no other bootable media, it gets there eventually. It then takes another 30-ish seconds for Unraid to boot.
Future

I would love to get 6.10.0-rc2 working, but at the moment there doesn't appear to be any method that I can get working. Perhaps a post on the Unraid forum would get me there.