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jon_hh_68 · Mar 8, 2003, 12:06 AM

I have one of them new 12 inch powerbooks, and it appears that it benefits from a daily restart. The main benefit I see is in power management. I generally see the time available increase and the rate of power drain decrease after a restart. I have used process viewer to look for very active power draining processes that may be stopped by restarting, but have not found any.

I realize that OS X is unix based and unix is designed for long uptimes, however I have heard machines with long uptimes are meant to be dedicated to one application, which is very different from general purpose consumer computing.

So, is it better to restart daily or every few days, or not?

[APi]TheMan · Mar 8, 2003, 12:33 AM

Originally posted by jon_hh_68:
So, is it better to restart daily or every few days, or not?

If you see restarting every day helps, do it

I only restart for updates. I log out and back in every few days or so to freshen the system up a bit, but restarting only happens for updates or if I notice something is getting screwy.

Cadaver · Mar 8, 2003, 01:08 AM

I also haven't found much benefit from restarting daily, but then again this is on a desktop machine.

On my TiBook, I will shut it down if I'm going to sleep it for more than 4 or 5 hours.

My desktop, on the other hand, doesn't get rebooted until it needs it. I had it going 31 days before I updated to 10.2.4 and the last security update. I do occasionally log out and back in if I make changes to the system (TinkerTool for example), but otherwise it just goes & goes. I don't see any speed benefit from reboots, either. In fact, since MacOS X caches so much, I actually think it runs better the longer it's been up.

wataru · Mar 8, 2003, 01:37 AM

When I start getting a lot of pageouts I reboot. Also when I want to run disk maintenance stuff, I either boot to OS 9 and use Norton or do a single-user startup and do fsck. Otherwise it's pretty much just updates and freezes.

funkboy · Mar 8, 2003, 02:07 AM

For laptops, yes, shutting down is not a bad thing. No battery drain, anyway. I left my iBook asleep for about a week straight, with 1% battery after that... oops.

Some things go weird after using my iMac for awhile... spring-loaded folders stop reacting to me hitting the space bar, for instance, and I have no clue why. Very annoying bug, hope it's fixed for 10.2.5 or whatever. Maybe even 10.3, just soon

ambush · Mar 8, 2003, 11:03 AM

With my ibook, forget it, I can't have a big uptime 3 days max. It crashes after that or starts acting weird.

ibobunot · Mar 9, 2003, 11:28 AM

I only restart for updates. The longer it runs the more solid it gets. I can't remember when I had my last system freeze.

Preciousss · Mar 9, 2003, 11:39 PM

I think I read somewhere that leaving your computer on with OSX allows some background maintenance routines to run in the background every night. As long as you haven't configured the HD to spin down (or something like that). Anybody else heard of this or know if there's any truth to it? If so, what time and what sort of maintenance?

I basically put my GigaBook to sleep whenever I'm not using it (i.e while sleeping myself, so I could be missing out on those maintenance routines). The first time I called Apple for some tech support, the guy I spoke to said it's good to restart every now and then because things don't get written to the directory otherwise (I know that doesn't sound right, but I'm pretty sure that's what he said).

Don Pickett · Mar 10, 2003, 12:14 AM

Originally posted by Preciousss:
I think I read somewhere that leaving your computer on with OSX allows some background maintenance routines to run in the background every night. As long as you haven't configured the HD to spin down (or something like that). Anybody else heard of this or know if there's any truth to it? If so, what time and what sort of maintenance?

cron jobs, which is what you're talking about, run no matter what so long as your computer is on.

dampeoples · Mar 10, 2003, 12:15 AM

I restart when stuff acts weird, I need an update or a kernal panic, they sleep the rest of the time

Earth Mk. II · Mar 10, 2003, 12:18 AM

I restart a completly random intervals. I'll just be bored and hit restart so I can see the text (I have it set to boot in verbose mode by default) scroll by for a minute or two.

But usually the system is up for about a week or so before I feel like it needs a restart.

Cipher13 · Mar 10, 2003, 03:21 AM

Originally posted by Don Pickett:
cron jobs, which is what you're talking about, run no matter what so long as your computer is on.

Not when it's asleep...

mrtew · Mar 10, 2003, 09:31 PM

I restart when my memory monitor shows that my memory is full. And yes I count inactive memory as full. Ususally it takes a day or two two fill up, but I just like the look of it having free memory. That way I never have any pageouts, and always have a nice fresh system. I guess I am just the opposite of the people that use the 'vanity dockling'.

Avon · Mar 11, 2003, 11:20 AM

Originally posted by ambush:
With my ibook, forget it, I can't have a big uptime 3 days max. It crashes after that or starts acting weird.

TiBook gets around 5 days uptime before it acts a little flaky and must be restarting.

My Desktop stays on untill every update.

Avon · Mar 11, 2003, 11:29 AM

12:40PM up 47 days, 20:07, 1 user, load averages: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

nsxpower · Mar 11, 2003, 11:33 AM

I used to have an iBook and kept it running all the time, sleeping and restarting for system updates only.

Doing the same for the TiBook ... sleep and restart only when installing system updates.

I just use Cotail 1.0 to run the cron tasts and some other stuff as well. Logout and log back in - works magically to fix some of the annoyances that appear after running the machine for too long.

mism · Mar 11, 2003, 11:39 AM

I found it hard to get out of the OS 9 restart habit, it was always refreshing to restart.
But these days I leave my dual gig on 24-7. I'm in and out of photoshop, illustrator, freehand, cinema 4d, file make etc all of the time but its rock solid. I had my first full lock up for months last week (copying from a CD while opening illy, very odd), other than that its a dream, if I ever have to use an OS 9 machine its a nighmare.
I log out most nights for security reasons, and shut down once every few weeks, to give my mac a rest ;-)

Do cron tasks run when logged out? I leave my mac logged in some nights as I am suspicious they don't.

forkies · Mar 11, 2003, 07:05 PM

Originally posted by Earth Mk. II:
I restart a completly random intervals. I'll just be bored and hit restart so I can see the text (I have it set to boot in verbose mode by default) scroll by for a minute or two.

I think this is the best strategy mentioned, stick with what this guy/gal says!

Brass · Mar 11, 2003, 07:49 PM

You guys that restart regularly...

Have you tried logging out and logging back in instead?

It frees up a lot of memory, and stops all user processes such that you end up with a very clean system ALMOST exactly the same as a restart would (there are some exceptions). If you haven't tried it, give it a go. Save a lot of time!

CheesePuff · Mar 11, 2003, 07:59 PM

Does anyone else here have a PowerBook G4 and leave it on all of the time? (all night long as well). I do have a Podium CoolPad which helps a lot with the heat and fan problem, so I doubt heat would be an issue. Also, do you have your hard drive spin down? I heard that some early IBM or Hitachi 2.5" drives were only meant for 12 hours or so use a day.

theory · Mar 11, 2003, 08:33 PM

I rarely restart if I don't have to but recently something happened that made me restart more frequently.

I got a kp and restarted my computer I fsck the disk fixed some problems then continued booting little did I know that if I was to run fsck again it would find major problems with my disk. Any way I kept on using my computer for a month or so after that incident later. I tried to boot in System 9 but after I restarted The hd disk didn't mount. How this happened I am not sure but my guess is that
not fixing the problem I had for so long made it worse. Any way I spent 1.5 hours scaning and rescaning the HD to get all the problems fixed. If I would have restarted sooner fsck would the problem would
have been found earlier and solved with less trouble.

Moral of the story. If you wan't to make sure your disks aren't damaged restart at least once a week because every time you restart
the computer scans the disks and corrects any problems with it.

Earth Mk. II · Mar 11, 2003, 09:51 PM

Originally posted by theory:
Moral of the story. If you wan't to make sure your disks aren't damaged restart at least once a week because every time you restart
the computer scans the disks and corrects any problems with it.

Or you could turn on file system journaling. It's not a perfect solution, but it helps immensely.

Brass · Mar 12, 2003, 07:38 PM

Originally posted by theory:
If you wan't to make sure your disks aren't damaged restart at least once a week because every time you restart
the computer scans the disks and corrects any problems with it.

If you're talking about fsck here, then this statement is incorrect. fsck is only ivoked at startup time if the filesystem(s) were not unmounted cleanly (eg, such as after a power failure).

When you restart your computer, the filesystems are unmounted nicely, so fsck is not invoked on startup.