I am going away to a different home. I am wondering how I can reboot my channels DVR from another place. For some reason, it seems to crash and need to be rebooted once a week, especially after a server update. I am anticipating it crashing while I’m gone. I run my channels on a Mac desktop. I don’t believe it’s an issue with my hard drive. Any help is appreciated! Thank you
You could build a pi kvm
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Does this help?
I used this approach to reboot my Mac weekly because if it went for more than about 2wks between reboots the external USB harddrive I used for recordings would disconnect and not reconnect without a reboot.
You just have to make sure you have the Channels DVR installed in such a way that it automatically restarts upon boot. (I think that's covered in the installation instructions)
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You could use Remote Desktop software
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Is there a command to restart it? Could use something like Pulseway then to run the command.
Ok I will look into that. Never heard of that program.
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Is there such a thing for the channels DVR or would that be for my Mac literally?
It could possibly help. What i mean is that the connection to channels craps out for some reason, after a few days, and I have to go to reboot it, usually by rebooting the computer. My drive rarely crashes.
It all depends on how your server is setup. Personally, I SSH into the server I have running Channels and manage it as necessary from the command line. This works well for Linux/*BSD/macOS servers, or for containerized instances.
Sorry this is a stupid question. How do I do that. Can I download some kind of app if I know what my IP address is and access it?
SSH is built into the mac os. "How" you do that has many variables including getting past your router from an external IP. You may need a VPN as well.
Start by a Google search regarding SSH on a Mac. If this approach seems like something that interest you, then Google for a self-hosted VPN.
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Understood. The point I was trying to make was, rather than rebooting it on-demand, reboot it on a schedule so that you don't have to reboot it on demand.
If your Mac is setup to automatically restart the DVR when rebooted, then one option may be to just use a wifi connected Smart Outlet and toggle the outlet off and back on via an app on your smart phone when away from home.
But rather that going that route, maybe the suggestion from @VTTom to reboot on schedule may be the easiest - for example rebooting each night at 1am?
I cant figure out how to get in to my channels from here. all it is my desktop
So just set to reboot at a time there are no recordings?
I use the free version of Team Viewer to remote into my server when I am away.
https://www.teamviewer.com/
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I have zero experience with Mac but I was thinking a automated solution might be the way to go given you deal with crashes regularly. This is an old link and might be out of date but it is down the lines of what I was thinking -- for whatever it's worth...
Right. For instance, I had set mine to reboot every Monday at 3:00AM to start off the week with a clean slate.
+1 for TeamViewer