Friday, October 5, 2018

All Services Go

I never did get ChaosServer to boot off my external High Sierra install drive, but I was able to get it working. I booted into Internet Recovery Mode and from there was able to wipe clean my internal drive and install macOS High Sierra onto it.
I had this plan that I wouldn’t use any of the built-in macOS Server utilities, but I just couldn’t help myself - they are too easy! So I installed macOS Server and enabled the VPN and the DNS services. I use the DNS so that when I’m trying to access ChaosServer inside my network I can use the standard hostname and then it will use the internal IP address (rather than doing a loopback through the Eero). I’ve never had VPN before, but as I’ve been shifting more and more toward the iPad lifestyle, I had this idea.
On my iPhone / iPad setup the VPN and I installed the FileBrowser app which remotely mounts SMB drives in the iOS Files App. So now, while I’m out and about from the house, I can use VPN+FileBrowser on iOS to use my home system as my own cloud storage system. Which is great! I’ve had a lot of staredowns about moving all my personal files and photos to iCloud, but I’m old fashioned and I do have thins like prior tax returns, and credit reports, that I’m just not sure I want to be out there on iCloud. The final one is that I would probably need the 2 TB plan, and I’m just not sure I want to pay Apple that much money every month.