Is there a clever way to run Roon Server on a Mac Mini as a service? The idea is to have Roon running on boot up, without having to log into the server as a user and start the application. You then have to stay logged in. By and large that is fine, but it’s not as clean as running it as a service and not having to login as a user.
There must be a way to do this? Or does Apple lock one out of doing this?
The easy way of getting this effect is to configure your Mac to auto-login to a specific user account, and set that account to auto-open the Roon (server) application on login. This is what I did when I used to run Roon on my Mac Mini.
Not quite what you asked, but more or less the same effect: boot the Mac, Roon starts automatically.
I don’t know any reason why you couldn’t write a plist file for launchd to do what you want, but it would be a little more work. (If the previous sentence doesn’t make sense to you, it will be a lot more work.)
Good luck!
Set Roon as a Login Item, it will launch when you login to your account or you could write an Automator script to launch Roon on login.
When the lock screen appears after no input Roon will keep running. I have a Mini as my Roon Core and rarley log into it. It’s running 24/7.
Great suggestions, but I’d recommend the light weight core only server app for the Mac to run as a background app. Sorry, can’t add link while on phone, but its on Roons download page.
Good suggestion. The link is midway down the page.
so:
Add images
Thanks for the feedback! I had forgotten about the “auto-login” feature of Mac, so that coupled with the “Start at Login” will be just like running it as a service.
LaunchD option is cool too, but that’s for another day!
I just spent a fruitless hour or two trying to get this to work using a Launch Daemon. I got the server up and running before user login, and could connect to it with my remotes, but none of the external drives would mount - so all the music files were inaccessible. There must be a way round this, but I’ve given up for now.
He @DaveN , would you happen to have that plist file still? Would like to see it as mine seems to be shutting down after 20 secs or so. Was aiming to have a startup daemon running under a user account. Thanks!
I never managed to get it working, and it’s not a priority as I run the server on my main computer so don’t really need it.
If you’re planning on running under a specific account you don’t need any sort of scripting, … assuming you’re running your core on a Mac. Just set the relevant account to auto login …
Then add Roon Server to you Login Items (System Preferences → Users & Groups → Login Items).
