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You are here: MacNN Forums > Software - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Applications > regular maintenance on Tiger?

regular maintenance on Tiger?
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rickey939
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Jun 26, 2006, 08:05 AM
 
Macaroni is marvelous.
     
chabig
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Jun 26, 2006, 08:32 AM
 
I use and love Macaroni. You never interact with it, it just works when it should. That said, I like Onyx when I have problems.

Chris
     
krx
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Jun 26, 2006, 10:31 AM
 
An earlier thread left me confused as to whether it was necessary or even a good idea to run "maintenance" software like Cocktail and MacJanitor. One post said that Tiger handles all this maintenance for you, whether your computer is on 24/7 or not. Two questions:

1. Is this true? And, if so, does that mean these programs are superfluous on machines w/Tiger OS?

2. What regular maintenance (other than backups) is recommended for Tiger OS? For example, the manual for DiskWarrior 3.0 says to run DW for preventive maintenance to rebuild the disc directory and optimize the drive. Is this recommended on Tiger?

I have a 1.33 GHz iBookG4, in case it matters.
     
chabig
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Jun 26, 2006, 10:38 AM
 
I truly believe that those programs are superfluous. But if it makes you feel better, go ahead and run them. I do.

Chris
     
TETENAL
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Jun 26, 2006, 10:47 AM
 
Tiger is self-maintenig. You don't have to do/run anything.
     
nbnz
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Jun 26, 2006, 10:53 AM
 
I run Yasu now and then, probably not needed but I guess it doesn't hurt either.
iMac, Intel Core-Duo 2GHz, 2GB, 250GB, OS X 10.4
PowerBook 12", 867MHz, 640MB, 60GB, OS X 10.4
iMac G3, 333MHz, 288MB, 6GB, OS X 10.3
iPods: 3G iPod, 1G mini, 1G shuffle, 2G nano
     
krx
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Jun 26, 2006, 11:30 AM
 
Yasu looks interesting. I just read an article describing a recommended maintenance routine that was linked to the Yasu page. Seems pretty thorough but I wonder how much of this applies to Tiger; it seems to be written for pre-Tiger OS X.

Someone in another thread mentioned Automator Actions. Anybody know anything about this?
     
krx
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Jun 26, 2006, 11:53 AM
 
Just read another thread and found two more recommended apps for maintenance: macaroni and OnyX.

It would be great if ppl familiar with these six (and any other good) maintenance apps could give their opinions of them. So far we've got:

1. Cocktail
2. MacJanitor
3. Yasu
4. Automator Actions
5. Macaroni
6. OnyX
     
tooki
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Jun 26, 2006, 03:39 PM
 
Maintenance on Mac OS X should only be performed as a repair or troubleshooting step. Otherwise, most such things actually degrade performance by eroding the caches the system has carefully assembled.

The only exception, IMHO, is DiskWarrior. I run it now and then prophylactically, and also any time I've had a freeze or crash (especially those requiring a hard reboot), lest any disk corruption creep in.

tooki
     
wataru
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Jun 26, 2006, 06:05 PM
 
Originally Posted by krx
Just read another thread and found two more recommended apps for maintenance: macaroni and OnyX.

It would be great if ppl familiar with these six (and any other good) maintenance apps could give their opinions of them. So far we've got:

1. Cocktail
2. MacJanitor
3. Yasu
4. Automator Actions
5. Macaroni
6. OnyX
Here's an opinion for you: You don't need to run any of them, and some of them are security risks. Just don't bother.
     
krx
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Jun 27, 2006, 09:16 PM
 
This thread begins w/the first post by me, krx. The two posts at the top belong at the bottom. Somehow the time got screwed up and they were posted at the top .
     
mr_noodle
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Jun 27, 2006, 09:48 PM
 
The important caveat here is whether you keep your machine on 24/7. There are scripts that are run in the middle of the night and if your machine is off or asleep, they will not run on a reliable schedule. Last time I checked, it seemed as if the task would run at a time delayed by the amount of time the machine was asleep and the effect is cumulative which goes against the documentation for launchd (which runs the scripts) so it's probably a bug. But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

So, the point is, something like MacJanitor may be useful to force the running of these scripts. The scripts themselves do basic maintenance such as rotating log files. You can take a look at them in the /etc/periodic directory. All MacJanitor does is call these scripts (and provides a GUI for the command-line-averse).

If you are curious as to whether these scripts are being run, you can check the log files and look for the dates (each run of the scripts prints out the date):

/var/log/daily.out
/var/log/weekly.out
/var/log/monthly.out

I can't comment on the other programs mentioned as I haven't used them.
     
krx
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Jun 28, 2006, 11:24 AM
 
I hate asking questions like this because it betrays my wicked ignorance, but where exactly do you find the log files again? I know I've had to check them before but I can't recall how to pull them up. I'm afraid I belong to that lowly subspecies you refer to as the "command-line-averse."

Sometimes I wonder whether these forums do me any good at all: they give me just enough know-how to make me dangerous.

In any case, I do put my iBooks to sleep at night, so any scripts defeated by sleep would be, well, defeated. But I've read elsewhere that Tiger overcame this limitation and just runs the scripts at the next waking. I do notice that I need to shut down/restart my machines every week or two or they start getting seriously bogged down - so maybe the scripts now run at restart?
     
mr_noodle
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Jun 28, 2006, 03:01 PM
 
Originally Posted by krx
I hate asking questions like this because it betrays my wicked ignorance, but where exactly do you find the log files again? I know I've had to check them before but I can't recall how to pull them up. I'm afraid I belong to that lowly subspecies you refer to as the "command-line-averse."
No need to be scared to ask. I believe you shouldn't need to go command-line if possible. And there's actually a way to view the logs without resorting to the command-line.

- Run Console (it's in Applications:Utilities)
- The console window shows the output of the console.log file.
- Click on the "Logs" toolbar button. It'll show you a bunch of different log files you can view.
- Click on the log in question. The logs I mentioned above are in /var/log.

In any case, I do put my iBooks to sleep at night, so any scripts defeated by sleep would be, well, defeated. But I've read elsewhere that Tiger overcame this limitation and just runs the scripts at the next waking. I do notice that I need to shut down/restart my machines every week or two or they start getting seriously bogged down - so maybe the scripts now run at restart?
The documentation says it runs at the next awakening but at least when I checked some time ago, this wasn't the case. Instead, it would be delayed by the time it was asleep and this delay would grow the more you put it to sleep. Maybe this was fixed in an update.

The scripts basically just trim down a bunch of log and accounting files. It will free up some disk space but I don't think it is the reason for your machine getting bogged down unless your disk is close to full or your logs are getting so big that the actual trimming process is slowing down your machine temporarily. I'd recommend having Activity Monitor running and note what process is sucking up CPU when your machine gets bogged down.
     
krx
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Jun 28, 2006, 04:03 PM
 
Well I checked the logs and they all appear to be running per schedule - thanks for walking me through this. As for what's bogging me down, I'm only using about a third of my disc space so that can't be it. It seems to me this only happens when I'm in Safari and after using it heavily - lots of windows open, etc. But once it starts slowing down (notably increased hangtimes mostly) everything else slows down with it - Word, Eudora, etc. Quitting Safari doesn't help but restarting completely eliminates the problem.

I'll watch the activity monitor next time it happens and see what's happening there.
     
production_coordinator
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Jun 28, 2006, 04:45 PM
 
The only regular maintenance I perform is opening up my case and vacuuming it out.
     
krx
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Jun 28, 2006, 04:51 PM
 
Do you repair permissions (or maybe not consider that maintenance, per se)?
     
mr_noodle
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Jun 28, 2006, 05:56 PM
 
I don't repair permissions as it is unnecessary most of the time. I think these articles sum it up best (actually, "sum it up" might not be the best term since the first article is on the lengthy side):

http://www.unsanity.org/archives/000410.php
http://daringfireball.net/2006/04/re...issions_voodoo

As for what's bogging you down, make sure you check your memory usage (available in Activity Monitor). If you don't have enough memory, then your system will bog down from swapping.
     
Briareus
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Jun 28, 2006, 09:49 PM
 
Originally Posted by production_coordinator
The only regular maintenance I perform is opening up my case and vacuuming it out.
Quoted for emphasis - most people forget about this!
     
   
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