[gemigene]

Hi,

Since installing Leopard on my new iMac 24 which came preloaded with Tiger (doing an A&I, I don't have a backup drive), I have had several glitches and a few questions:

Airport kicks me out of the LAN every so often and when I try re-accessing the network, sometimes a simple click on my default network works and other times I have to go into network diagnostics and input the default values which should have been fetched from my keychain. Also, at times it tells me that it can't connect to my router which sits about 10" away from the iMac.

I thought that maybe my Airport Extreme Base Station might have been faulty but i have an older iMac 17 (Tiger) on the network and it never loses it's connection.

Also, before buying the new iMac, I had a wireless network setup with co-workers (using Macs and PC's) to work on a web development project and these people created 3 or 4 network setups that still show when I click on my Airport icon, how do I get rid of those? They don't show in the network setup list. When I first got the new iMac, I did a "migration" of all data that was on my older Mac and it probably imported all of this garbage.

As far as connecting to the internet using Airport, I'll hard wire my iMac to the router (Ethernet) and that should take the aggravation of being kicked off the internet every so often but I sure wish there would be a fix for this.

Does Leopard have the same sub routines to run the daily, weekly and monthly maintenance scripts? Being that I shut my computer off at night, I used to run MacJanitor, does this application run on Leopard?

What do I use to repair disk permissions under Leopard?

Also, when I tried deleting the "Previous System" folder from my A&I install, I get the following message:
The operation cannot be completed because the item "Airport Disk Agent" is in use...

And last, I noticed some quirkiness with Camino under Leopard (especially with Bookmarks), would the "new and improved" Safari be a better browser?

Sorry for all of the above questions but I'm somewhat frustrated with Leopard and wonder if switching back to Tiger would be a better option.


Thanks,
Gene

[besson3c]

I would suggest not running MacJanitor. I would not suggest running it if not necessary in Tiger, and especially not Leopard seeing how it is a new OS and many of these same tasks may not be necessary any longer. You should never have to repair permissions except under very specific and rare conditions, and you should not just run it randomly for no real reason.

Is your machine set to sleep? Would this coincide with your being bumped off your network?

[gemigene]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

I would suggest not running MacJanitor. I would not suggest running it if not necessary in Tiger, and especially not Leopard seeing how it is a new OS and many of these same tasks may not be necessary any longer. You should never have to repair permissions except under very specific and rare conditions, and you should not just run it randomly for no real reason.

OK, thanks, I'll delete MacJanitor being that it isn't made for Leopard. Repairing permissions seemed to be quite the solution to many problems on Tiger. Does Leopard have a maintenance routine?

Is your machine set to sleep? Would this coincide with your being bumped off your network?

It's set to sleep after 3 hours of inactivity, never happens. LOL

Thanks,
Gene

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by gemigene 

OK, thanks, I'll delete MacJanitor being that it isn't made for Leopard. Repairing permissions seemed to be quite the solution to many problems on Tiger. Does Leopard have a maintenance routine?

There are nightly cronjobs that run. If you put your machine to sleep at night, install anacron so that they are run some other time. It is not the end of the world if these scripts don't run every night.

However, repairing permissions is not a maintenance routine at all. It is a routine designed to help solve very specific problems, but running it for no reason can be a security risk, and the vast majority of your time simply be a waste of your time.

It's set to sleep after 3 hours of inactivity, never happens. LOL

You might want to disable automatic sleep then (there may be some app or process that is keeping your machine awake).

What default values are you referring to that you have to enter? Your WAP password?

What sorts of conditions are necessary to be kicked off your LAN? Does it happen when the machine is idling? Can it be reproduced? Does it happen randomly while are you working?

[analogika]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

There are nightly cronjobs that run. If you put your machine to sleep at night, install anacron so that they are run some other time. It is not the end of the world if these scripts don't run every night.

This has been unnecessary since 10.4, which is why MacJanitor is merely a placebo.

The maintenence cron jobs are remembered and missed tasks are performed the next time the machine is woken up.

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

However, repairing permissions is not a maintenance routine at all. It is a routine designed to help solve very specific problems, but running it for no reason can be a security risk, and the vast majority of your time simply be a waste of your time.

Unless you run into problems like this. It was from a clean install. And I hadn't touched the application or launched it before this incident.



Having said that, Apple REQUESTS that you repair permission both before and after installing any OS updates.

[analogika]

Where?

[Kevin]

I gotta go real quick, but I am positive it's in here somewhere

About Disk Utility's Repair Disk Permissions feature

or

Troubleshooting permissions issues in Mac OS X

But as far as the argument goes, here is a good article.

Macworld: Secrets: Repairing permissions: What you need to know

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by analogika 

This has been unnecessary since 10.4, which is why MacJanitor is merely a placebo.

The maintenence cron jobs are remembered and missed tasks are performed the next time the machine is woken up.

What invokes them? Launchd?

[analogika]

Yes.

Running Mac OS X Maintenance Scripts

Under Tiger, the new launchd process invokes each script on a schedule specified in a script-specific property list (.plist file) in the /System/Library/LaunchDaemons directory. The specific property list for each script is as follows:

daily script: com.apple.periodic-daily.plist
weekly script: com.apple.periodic-weekly.plist
monthly script: com.apple.periodic-monthly.plist
Additional information about launchd can be found in the Apple Developer Connection document System Startup Programming Topics.

How the timer used by launchd handles sleep time has led many to believe that they no longer need to run the maintenance scripts, and that the scripts are run automatically if the Mac was asleep or shutdown at the scheduled time, ala third-party utilities such as Anacron. However, this is untrue.

While it may appear that launchd executes the maintenance scripts "on the fly" if the computer is asleep or shutdown at the appointed time, this is a side effect of how the timer treats time the computer has spent in sleep mode. The timer used by launchd does not count sleep time. If your Mac is asleep at the scheduled time at which a given script is supposed to run, the script may run later that day, at a time shifted by the amount of time the Mac was asleep. However, if you restart your Mac before the time-shifted execution time, pending events are lost and the script will not run off-schedule: the next chance for the script to run will be at its regularly scheduled time.

If you regularly restart your Mac and the computer regularly sleeps or is shutdown at the scheduled times, it's possible that the scripts will never run, hence one should still run them manually, say on a weekly basis.

[besson3c]

Cool, thanks for the info Analogika....

Yeah, I'll say that apps like MacJanitor are pretty much useless to run randomly for no real purpose...

[Kevin]

I think people often run them when their is no reason to, but I've had to fix permission before to get something to work.

I guess they feel by doing so, no harm is being done, and that any problems that may arise would be fixed.