Headless Mac as a music server/streamer - hints and tips

[Hifi_swlon]

As I've mentioned in a couple of other posts, I'm in the process of setting up a Mac Mini to run "headless" as a music server/streamer.  Although I'm fairly happy in general with setting up a Mac, I'd be really grateful if anyone has any hints and tips, dos and dont's, about running a headless system in particular.  Hopefully they might be useful for others following the same path.

For example, it was news to me that not having a display connected could slow down remote access, possibly because the GPU would be disabled.  The solution is to use an HDMI display emulator.

A couple of specific questions that I have in mind at the moment include:

• is it better to set up a separate (non-admin) user account to run music streaming software and own the music library, rather than (for example) using my own account)?
  
• is it sensible to enable automatic log-in (to avoid having to manually log in after a power cycle)?
  

I'm thinking more along the lines of ease of use rather than sound quality, at least for the moment.

But please feel free to just throw in anything you think might be helpful.

Looking forward to hearing advice from those that have "been there, done that" - thanks in anticipation!

Ian

I've been running headless for ages on my mini.
I use a dongle as I like to have the option to set the display res depending on where I remote in from. I just use the Mac screen sharing, so the dongle may be redundant now but I use it anyway. It was cheapish on Amazon or eBay I think.
I made an account for av stuff and it auto-logs in. Pretty much everything is disabled where possible - some things I used command line examples from the web to disable sporlight, notifications etc, plus turned off updates, and anything else that's annoying and might mess with the network.
It runs fine.
I may at some point repurpose it for video now I'm starting the horrible task of digitising my dvds so they can go server based too. Then I'd most likely get a Nuc or something and run RCK. depends on DSP stuff.

One tip - its highly advisable to make sure your network settings are all good before detaching monitor etc. Not once, but twice, I've set the mini up via wifi then unplugged it all and set it headless, only to then lock myself out by forgetting to set the Ethernet up properly before disabling wifi! Then had to wire it all up again to a monitor and fix. The second time just as I pressed disable on the wifi, I remembered what happened the last time round but it was too late.

I share the music folder out too so I can drop files in there from other machines. I let iTunes handle it unless it's files it can't deal with, which gives in another folder.