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chipster1 · Jan 17, 2006, 12:40 PM

Being a new owner of a 17" powerbook and new mac user, I would like to know what are the routine maintaince procedures I need to do to keep it working? Like clearing cookies, history,etc,etc. Also, is there anything in Mac that is similiar to System Restore? If so, where is it and how to use. Also, is it now safe to download latest updates to the software? There seemed to be some problems with the latest downloads. Thanks...Still finding my way around.

nuggetman · Jan 17, 2006, 01:22 PM

shouldnt be any problems w/ latest updates, but backup anyway for safety's sake

no version of system restore for mac sadly, but you can use a program like Carbon Copy Cloner to image your drive to an external one for easy restoring

cookies, history, etc is all basic maintainence from w/in safari, poke around

defrag/scandisk/etc are unnessecary

leave your machine on overnight, os x has some maintainence scripts it runs at 2 or 3 am to clean things up

Al G · Jan 17, 2006, 02:42 PM

Repair Permissions (in Disk Utility) before and after a system software upgrade or other major software installation. That's really about it.

Nuggetman is right, except technically, there is a "Restore" function in Disk Utility. But it's really only a built-in Apple version of something like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper. It's just a brute force way to make a bootable exact copy of a drive or partition to another drive or partition. While clumsy and inelegant, it can be a useful way to recover from a buggy software upgrade if you're willing to devote an external drive (or partition your internal drive) to backup.

Otherwise, if you install an OS update and it happens to break something you need, the only way to get back to the previous version is to reinstall by doing an Archive & Install (to keep your data and settings) and apply all the updates up to the point before the problem occured. It takes a lot longer to do that than to restore from a backup.

A Windows-like System Restore is really needed.

SpaceMonkey · Jan 17, 2006, 03:44 PM

Originally Posted by nuggetman

leave your machine on overnight, os x has some maintainence scripts it runs at 2 or 3 am to clean things up

The actual importance of these scripts has been completely overhyped. In any case, if the original poster has Tiger, which it sounds like he does, then these scripts are automatically run at the next available opportunity if the computer is off or asleep at their normally scheduled time. He can turn his Powerbook off overnight without any problems.

rem · Jan 17, 2006, 03:46 PM

There is really not much that needs to be done maintenance wise. I think the importance of repairing permissions is overblown, yet I do it too about once per week or after a software update. Why not

These are things that do not necessarily need to be done, but if you really want to fine tune...

Aside from what others have suggested, approx twice a month I usually delete cache files (from user folder -> Library -> Caches) -- delete the contents of "Cache", not the folder itself.

To recup hd space, you could occasionally move some old gzipped (.gz) log files in /var/log onto another drive/cd/etc. I know some people just delete them, but later they might not be able to trace an occurence back to its root.

As nuggetman mentioned, by default your system runs three scripts (periodically as evident from their names) at 3am. If your PB is off/sleeping at the time, their execution is skipped. Some folks run these scripts manually: /etc/daily, /etc/weekly, /etc/monthy. I've heard there is a 3rd party gui program that does this.

If ever you shut your machine down improperly, its not a bad idea to run "repair disk" (which does an fsck) from your PB system CD (meaning boot from that CD). It has to be done from cd or another drive as a drive that is already mounted cannot be repaired.

rem · Jan 17, 2006, 03:48 PM

Originally Posted by SpaceMonkey

The actual importance of these scripts has been completely overhyped. In any case, if the original poster has Tiger, which it sounds like he does, then these scripts are automatically run at the next available opportunity if the computer is off or asleep at their normally scheduled time. He can turn his Powerbook off overnight without any problems.

That is good to know. Those who have Tiger please disregard my comment above about running these scripts manually.