Mac Mini Crashing

[naples98]

I'm using my 2014 Mac Mini as a home server. I share the iTunes library and it hosts some VMs using VMware Fusion. It is fully update dated with Yosemite but I don't have OS X Server installed. Finally, I have a 2TB external drive connected that holds my music/movies. I have a few questions.

1. After a reboot, I have to physically connect a keyboard to the Mini to login for the first time. After that, I can use the screen sharing capability built into OS X to log into the system from my MacBook Pro without any issues. This seems a bit odd to me but is it supposed to work this way?

2. I've been having a lot of issues with the system just shutting down for no apparent reason, at least that I can tell. Recently it got stuck in a cycle where every time I tried to boot it up, it immediately went to the password recovery screen. I decided I was going to re-install everything to see if that fixed the shutting down/crashing so I decrypted the drive (i.e. turned FileVault off). After a few days, it seems to be doing better and staying powered on. Could FileVault have anything to do with this? Are there any known issues with using FileVault?

3. Could having FileVault on be the cause of issue #1? I haven't tried rebooting and logging in since I decrypted the drive.

 

[DFWHD]

I'm not using file vault, however did have issue #2 on a brand new 2012 MM server recently. Does your system have SSD or spinning HDD? Mine had two spinners and after several clean installs, two visits to the Apple store with them doing clean installs, then being told it must have been something I did, I called AppleCare back and my case got escalated. A senior level rep instructed the store to replace the HDD and not to question it (the store swore the HDD was fine). Once it was replaced, I have not had a crash since then (2+ months now). From what I can tell, the so called geniuses at the store are morons.

Good luck, hope things get resolved soon, as I know it's a pain to go through this.

 

[naples98]

Does your system have SSD or spinning HDD?

Thanks for the information. I have an SSD in mine (512GB). I checked again this morning and the system seems to be doing fine. I'm going to reboot this weekend and see if I can login into the system without having to be physically connected to it.

 

[sjinsjca]

FileVault would not seem to be something that contributes to this behavior you note. However, it does prevent automatic login at boot-up. Which means you must log in to complete the boot process and actually bring OS X Server up. If you find a way to do this remotely, please let us know!