tbrads
Mar 30, 2010, 01:53 PM
I have a 2.4Ghz Macbook4,1 (early 2008) with 4GB and a 128 GB SSD drive. I use it entirely as a music server, and have only the OS and apps stored on the SSD. My music is on an external USB drive, and my DAC is connected via firewire.
There is not a lot of keyboard/monitor activity with this Macbook; mostly doing maintenance like new music player update downloads, reboots, terminal commands like “renice” or the occasional browser activity. The machine sits on one of my front-of-room rack shelves so as to be near the DAC (1M firewire cabling, etc.). So ANY work on the machine is somewhat of a PITA because of its location. My music playing/browsing is all done via an iPod touch so day-to-day it mostly just sits there.
With the onset of the iPad my question is this: what is required to allow my Macbook to be run “headless”, or more to the point “closed clamshell”, and use a hopefully full-screen VNC app on the iPad to do all my terminal commands and occasional reboots and downloads? I am new to the MAC world, having entered it last year for music server purposes. Will a VNC app enable me to sit in my listening chair and do the simple terminal commands and docked player launching that I need? Will I be able to completely close the Macbook (based on some initial Googling it seems that it needs to know that an external keyboard and/or monitor is connected otherwise closing the lid shuts it down?).
My worst case scenario is that I keep the lid open enough to keep the Macbook from sleeping/shutting down (put something in its way as the lid is too heavy to stay propped open less than half way).
Thanks for any help
Ted
There is not a lot of keyboard/monitor activity with this Macbook; mostly doing maintenance like new music player update downloads, reboots, terminal commands like “renice” or the occasional browser activity. The machine sits on one of my front-of-room rack shelves so as to be near the DAC (1M firewire cabling, etc.). So ANY work on the machine is somewhat of a PITA because of its location. My music playing/browsing is all done via an iPod touch so day-to-day it mostly just sits there.
With the onset of the iPad my question is this: what is required to allow my Macbook to be run “headless”, or more to the point “closed clamshell”, and use a hopefully full-screen VNC app on the iPad to do all my terminal commands and occasional reboots and downloads? I am new to the MAC world, having entered it last year for music server purposes. Will a VNC app enable me to sit in my listening chair and do the simple terminal commands and docked player launching that I need? Will I be able to completely close the Macbook (based on some initial Googling it seems that it needs to know that an external keyboard and/or monitor is connected otherwise closing the lid shuts it down?).
My worst case scenario is that I keep the lid open enough to keep the Macbook from sleeping/shutting down (put something in its way as the lid is too heavy to stay propped open less than half way).
Thanks for any help
Ted
