[bkb]

I have some questions on this article:

http://www.macworld.com/2005/01/feat...ters/index.php

It recommends 8 maintenance procedures for OS X:

1) Verify Preferences
2) Repair Permissions
3) Delete Cache Files
4) Delete Log Files
5) Prebind
6) Automate Your Maintenance
7) Keep Hard Drives Healthy
8) Construct a Maintenance Toolbox

Questions:
1) Is there a fast way to Delete Cache Files (3) from the CL? The article says,

You’ll find OS X’s cache files in the System: Library: Caches folder, in your user folder’s Library folder, and in folders within individual application folders.

But doesn't provide a command for doing this.

2) It says,

"You can run OS X’s built-in daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance scripts to take care of the system-level log files. To root out log files at the user level, you need either the Console application (in Applications: Utilities) or an application such as NoName Scriptware’s CacheOutX."

Is there a more efficient way to clear user level log files from the CL than doing it as the article recommends - one at a time - through the Console?

3) Has anyone experienced a slow down after Prebinding?

4) Is this article accurate on defragging,

Although it sounds like a good idea, there’s disagreement about whether it’s necessary in OS X. With OS X 10.3 and later, if you have disk journaling enabled (it’s enabled by default), OS X performs a limited degree of defragmentation of smaller files during the normal course of operation. Many users shouldn’t give fragmentation a second thought.

But if you work with extremely large files—for example, huge Photoshop images or digital video files—you may find that a defragmented drive performs better. Although there are a few utilities for defragmenting
volumes in OS X, my favorite is TechTool Pro 4.

5) Would people agree that these maintenance procedures are beneficial?

6) Can anyone recommend any other maintenance procedures not covered here?

Thanks.

[Gavin]

You don't need to do any of this stuff. The system takes care of itself. Just leave your computer on all night once a week or so.

If you are low on disk space (~500 MB) dumping your caches now and then will help.

The rest of it is like when my mom used to clean the house before the house cleaners arrived. And none of this will improve your computer more than $50 of extra ram.

[leira]

I only do those maint. routines ( clear caches, etc.) if my machine is having problems. otherwise i let the system take care of itself.

Anacron is a great little app for taking care of the log rotation, and such usually done by cron. It was developed for systems that are not on all the time ie. laptops.

from http://www.alastairs-place.net/archives/Anacron.dmg

One of the more useful utility programs found on most UN*X boxes is the cron daemon, which allows a user to schedule repeating tasks; unfortunately, whilst Mac OS X has a perfectly good cron daemon, it doesn't perform any tasks when the machine is asleep or switched-off. Moreover, cron won't go back and process tasks it has missed, which means that the early-morning cleanup tasks configured by Apple are next to useless for many people.

Fortunately, this problem has existed for some time on other platforms, hence the existence of anacron, which is designed to run tasks that it has missed (for example because the machine is asleep).

[Detrius]

I have this in my .tcshrc on my diagnostic volume:


alias check_preferences 'sudo plutil -s /Volumes/*/Users/*/Library/Preferences/*.plist /Volumes/*/Users/*/Library/Preferences/*/*.plist /Volumes/*/var/root/Library/Preferences/*.plist /Volumes/*/var/root/Library/Preferences/*/*.plist /Volumes/*/Library/Preferences/*.plist /Volumes/*/Library/Preferences/*/*.plist'

check_preferences
echo "preferences checked"


BTW, it only properly checks preferences when the shell is run as root, as the shell doesn't properly expand some of the *s. There's probably a way around this by telling it to run a shell that runs the command instead of how it's done, but I haven't cared enough to look into it yet.