Published: 2018-11-15 01:27 |
Category: Projects | Tags: computers, debian, hardware, linux, lychee, mac mini, photos, projects, server, sharing
My wife bought a Mac Mini toward the end of college that has been sitting in our basement pretty much since we went to Korea in 2009. I've been wanting to do something with it for a while and with Flickr changing its accounts, now seemed like a good time.
I was looking for photo sharing alternatives to Flickr, mostly because I can't afford a pro membership and I'm already over the 1000 photo limit being imposed in January. I came across [Lychee](https://github.com/LycheeOrg/Lychee/), which is essentially single-user, self-hosted photo management. (Check out their [demo site](https://ld.electerious.com/) - it's pretty impressive). My home photo collection could also stand being backed up somewhere more consistently, so my goal is to convert the mini into a self-hosted photo sharing site so I can continue to post out on the web and have a backup at home.
*cracks knuckles*
I set up in the dining room and got started.
I have to say, it was pretty amazing plugging in this computer, which hasn't seen use in nearly a decade, and watching it boot up as if I had used it yesterday.
Tonight's fun is transferring old photos from a much-neglected Mac mini and then installing Linux. pic.twitter.com/U4bbG7ShFp
—Brian E. Bennett (@bennettscience) November 15, 2018
Macs have [long-had web hosting built right in](http://www.macinstruct.com/node/112). Apache and PHP are included by default and it's easy to install MySQL for databasing. I was hoping to go the easy route and just use the default tools. LOL.
Lychee requires PHP 5.5+. The mini (late 2006 model) has PHP 4.4 and Apache 1.3 installed. No good. I started searching for [ways to upgrade both](https://jeromejaglale.com/doc/mac/upgrade_php5_tiger), but the recommended site with ported versions for old copies doesn't exist anymore.
So, I grabbed another Mac for more efficient Googling. There was also beer.
The command center is fully operational. pic.twitter.com/3ScrhI76da
—Brian E. Bennett (@bennettscience) November 15, 2018
The best option, I think, is to boot into Linux rather than OSX 10.4. So, I started researching Debian distributions that would work on older hardware. My plan was to wipe the entire hard drive and dedicate it to server resources. When I landed on the Debian wiki, they had a page specifically for older, Intel-based Macs. This line caught my eye:
The oldest Mini (macmini1,1) is typically the most problematic, due to bugs in its firmware. When booting off CD/DVD, if there is more than one El Torito boot record on the disc then the firmware gets confused. It tried to offer a choice of the boot options, but it locks up instead.
That's not good. I have two choices: I can partition the drive to prevent losing the entire machine or I can go for it and hope that the OSX recover DVD I have in the basement still works. (I'll probably partition, just to be safe.)
Luckily, two lines later, the Debian wiki notes that specific builds are now available which only include _one_ boot record, which solves the problem. [A quick 300MB download of the Mac-specific distribution](https://cdimage.debian.org/pub/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-cd/) later and I'm ready to burn then disk image to a USB drive with [Etcher](https://github.com/balena-io/etcher).
Next steps are to actually do the Debian install.