[kevs]

As part of my monthly maintenance, should I clean or clear all cache from system. what is difference? and user, local cache?, virtual memory... thanks I'm using Onyx

[chabig]

The system is designed to take care of itself without your help. Don't do anything unless you're having problems.

Chris

[Dr. Smoke]

Cache cleaning is a troubleshooting step, not a regular maintenance step.

For some info on the side-effects of cache cleaning under later versions of Mac OS X 10.3 Panther, see the notes under Cache Cleaning in my Resolving Disk, Permission, and Cache Corruption FAQ.

[kevs]

This came up as having problems with Photoshop not launching properly and some Photoshop people asking about cache among other of the usual ideas and maintenance things.

Does this sound like cache thing? Would kind of scenarios would point you to cache, and could someone put in layman's terms what are downsides are cleaning cache . thanks.

[CharlesS]

Pros to cleaning caches:

- Can sometimes help fix problems that are caused by a bad cache file

Cons to cleaning caches:

- It's a complete waste of time if you aren't having some problem

Now, on to your problem with Photoshop. Since I don't own it, I'll have to ask if Photoshop has its own cache in ~/Library/Caches. If it does, it could be possible that the corrupted cache is making it crash, so cleaning it is a legitimate troubleshooting step. Trashing the prefs file is as well. However, before trying this, I'd try running Photoshop under a different user and seeing if the same problem occurs. If it still does, the problem is probably not anything in the home directory. If it goes away, then the problem probably is in the home directory and could be a prefs file, an Application Support file, a cache file, etc.

Also, sometimes reading the crash log in ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter can give clues as to what's going wrong.

[kevs]

Thanks Charles, nice tips.

Of course, the cleaning cache etc is a waste of time if it's not the problem, but you never really know -- until computers get so smart that when you have a problem a box comes up and says "photoshop not launching: please clean cache or please trash preferences"

were probably 100 years off from that.

[smeger]

Cleaning caches can sometimes cause new problems. For example, when you clean caches, you remove all of the file associates stored by Launch Services. These tell your Mac what program to use to open a particular file. Often, the ones that get set after you've cleaned caches aren't the ones you want.

In addition, if you have programs that aren't located in your /Applications folder, they'll lose their associations completely until you run that program again. This is almost certainly not what you want to have happen.

I personally feel that you should clean your caches only if you're having a particular problem, and then, you should only clean the particular cache file that you're having a problem with.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by kevs:
Thanks Charles, nice tips.

Of course, the cleaning cache etc is a waste of time if it's not the problem, but you never really know -- until computers get so smart that when you have a problem a box comes up and says "photoshop not launching: please clean cache or please trash preferences"

were probably 100 years off from that.

Actually, a partial implementation is less than a year off:

[kevs]

thanks smeger:
that why I put up post. Someone on photoshop forum said clean your caches, which I don't know ramifications of.

But when you say clean cache of the specific problem you mean app, each app has a cache. and where is that to clean? and who do you really know it's at root of problem?

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by kevs:
thanks smeger:
that why I put up post. Someone on photoshop forum said clean your caches, which I don't know ramifications of.

But when you say clean cache of the specific problem you mean app, each app has a cache. and where is that to clean? and who do you really know it's at root of problem?

The easiest thing is to go to ~/Library/Caches and look for a file or folder whose name contains either the name of the program you're using or the company that made it.

So in the case of Photoshop, you'd look for something that either mentions Adobe or Photoshop.

[Laurence]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
Actually, a partial implementation is less than a year off:

Can anyone with the Tiger beta confirm that this works with third party apps as well? Is there some type of database of how 3rd party apps store there prefs or does it only work for apps that use the com.company.product.plist form of preferences. I know that some of the Adobe apps still have a folder in ~/Library/Preferences as well as a .plist and sometimes another file like "Photoshop Preferences" or something like that.

Basically, how robust is this feature?

[kevs]

thanks, went to cach folder in home, library, and did not see adobe or photoshop. in fact, most my apps were not mentioned there... office, final cut, ...