Inspired by “What’s a good piece of hardware to run a jellyfin server?” I wanted to get the communities thoughts on how to set up my home media server.

Current hardware: Apple Mac mini “Core i7” 2.3 (Late 2012) with 8GB RAM (2x4GB) and 1.0TB Mercury Electra 6G SSD that I upgraded

OS: OMV6 (6.9.14-1 (Shaitan))

Docker containers:

Goal:

  • Use this old Mac Mini for as long as possible as a media server. Be able to download with Transmission over VPN and then add them to a Plex media folder via SMB on my Mac Studio. I want to manage the containers in Portainer and I’ve used Stacks/Compose to add most of the containers. Use the discrete GPU for hardware accelerated transcoding, mostly so I can download movies to my iPad quicker, less so other people can use it remotely. The containers should restart if they stop and I want to keep them updated automatically if possible. I’ve not experimented with Servarr yet (Radarr, Sonarr), not opposed, but also happy to drag them over.

Problems:

  • I don’t love OMV, I seem to have a recurring DNS issue with containerd that causes Plex to stop whenever I’m watching a movie. I can run a test and leave something playing all day and not have a problem, then whenever I want to watch something with my wife, the whole system becomes unavailable and I have to watch a ping until it comes back. I’m considering a new OS, it should be accessible via VNC/SSH and have my internal and external drive shared as a SMB share to my Mac. I can’t figure out how to get the GPU to be seen by OMV so everything is on the CPU, an OS where this is easier is preferred.

Questions:

  • Any OS recommendations to use instead of OMV6?
  • Advice on getting the discrete GPU seen in whatever OS I use?
  • I can’t tell if it’s Haugene causing the DNS issue, I’m using public Google/CloudFlare DNS to avoid using my PiHole that runs on a Pi3b. Can I set up Docker to use a different network so it doesn’t bring my whole system’s IP down? It might also be Watchtower updating a container and bring it down, any advice to troubleshoot would be appreciated.

Disclaimer:

  • IT guy, but mostly Mac. I can Google my way through most things, but I am NOT a Linux or Docker expert. So please go easy on me if I have any follow up questions!

Thank you in advance!

  • @robaleesOPEnglish
    1•3 months ago

    Thank you for answering my questions, I spent some time over the weekend performing testing. Sadly I suspect all my problems stem from my NIC failing. The loss of IP that I was seeing in OMV is still happening in Proxmox. Now trying to decide next steps, I can either keep throwing money at it and get an external Ethernet solution with compatible drivers or finally put this Mini to rest. I’ll probably make a post on the selfhosting community and see if anyone has any recommendations for hardware. Little peeved I bought the RAM and have this SSD with nowhere to make use of them. Maybe I can find a suitable machine that can use them, but I’m gonna guess they’ve aged out of the CPUs I’d need for better performance. But I am very happy with the Proxmox, LXC and Debian suggestions.

      • @robaleesOPEnglish
        1•3 months ago

        Thanks for the suggestions, I also tagged you in a post before I saw this. I’ll start researching the off lease options and I don’t hate the idea of a Dell 7050 with an i7. Would be amazing to make use of the SSD still. And really appreciate the advice with going with Proxmox, the UI is a million times better than trying to use OMV and made troubleshooting so much easier!