[clebin]

Just a small rant, but:

Does anyone else get sick of the amount of times X gets 'optimized' by installers?

I mean, I signed up for .Mac and first Backup, then Virex, then iDisk utility wanted to optimise my system...oblivious to the fact it had only just been done.

Now I'm installing the security update, and guess what - the hard drive's chugging away prebinding everything again.

It's slow and often pretty unnecessary. Couldn't we have a skip button - or a check on the last prebinding date...?

A bit of intelligence would make this a lot less hassle.

Chris

[Evangellydonut]

couldn't agree with you more...if it gets rid of fragments and do what Norton does every time, i wouldn't mind, but it doesn't...and things still get pretty screwed up...*sigh*

[Diggory Laycock]

Don't worry, it's much faster in Jag.

[Mactoid]

Originally posted by Diggory Laycock:
Don't worry, it's much faster in Jag.

Could you give an example of how much faster? Currenly on my box it takes about a half hour for a full "System Optimization". That is completely unacceptable. IMHO it needs to be at least 80% faster.

[pinlo]

Originally posted by Mactoid:
Currenly on my box it takes about a half hour for a full "System Optimization". That is completely unacceptable. IMHO it needs to be at least 80% faster.

Yes, it's a major pain. Why doesn't Apple just make a system cron job that does 'update_prebinding' every night when it rotates the system logs? Then no one would ever have to sit through an insanely long 'System Optimization' again.

I can dream, can't I?

[[email protected]]

My understanding of pre-binding is that it greatly differs from defragging. What Norton does is not what Apple's optimization does. The need for optimization comes from the fact that each update or new piece of software affects the system in some unique way, therefore, requires the optimization for each new piece of software. Nonetheless, I too wish that it was faster.

[Earth Mk. II]

Originally posted by pinlo:


Yes, it's a major pain. Why doesn't Apple just make a system cron job that does 'update_prebinding' every night when it rotates the system logs? Then no one would ever have to sit through an insanely long 'System Optimization' again.

I can dream, can't I?

Unless, of course, you sleep or shut down your CPU at night.

[pinlo]

Originally posted by Earth Mk. II:


Unless, of course, you sleep or shut down your CPU at night.

Good point. Cron needs to be able to wake a Mac from deep sleep to run its jobs.

Shut down? Shut down?! Don't shut down.

[eno]

Originally posted by pinlo:


Yes, it's a major pain. Why doesn't Apple just make a system cron job that does 'update_prebinding' every night when it rotates the system logs? Then no one would ever have to sit through an insanely long 'System Optimization' again.

I can dream, can't I?

Yes it is slow, but why do you even care? This is a multi-tasking OS, you know? Just switch to another app and work on!

[clebin]

The installer doesn't multitask.

Coming back to my example of .Mac, try installing Virex and then double-click the Backup installer while the prebinding is running. You'll have to Force Quit (something that doesn't inspire me with confidence when a load of hard disk writing is going on)

Plus, hard disk access is that much slower while the optimisation is happening.

And I might want to shut down or log out (I'm one of those crazy old fashioned types who thinks that leaving your machine on all the time is a waste of electricity) and again, I'd have to Force Quit.

In short, it's stupid and (mildly) annoying.

Chris

[ntsc]

i suppose this is an argument for the idea of having multiple instances of the installer app and getting round the problem, however i think there is a limiting factor in all of this and its the HD speed since most of this pre-binding seems to be disk activity.

[pinlo]

Originally posted by clebin:
The installer doesn't multitask.

The Installer doesn't have a choice. The Mach microkernel sees to that.

Plus, hard disk access is that much slower while the optimisation is happening.

This is very true, and the main reason I can't just switch to another app and continue my work. On my hardware, the system is basically unusable when the Installer is optimizing.

(I'm one of those crazy old fashioned types who thinks that leaving your machine on all the time is a waste of electricity)

A Mac in deep sleep probably consumes less electricity than the clock on your microwave (assuming you have one). I'm energy conscious too, but really -- it's negligible.

In short, it's stupid and (mildly) annoying.

That's an understatement. Couldn't agree with you more.

[iamnid]

Yeah the whole optimization thing is crap -- I'm not positive, but isn't it adding stuff to something like the Windows "registry" when it's doing that? If so... what a stupid idea to have adopted anything remotely similar to the windows registry.

[pinlo]

Originally posted by iamnid:
Yeah the whole optimization thing is crap -- I'm not positive, but isn't it adding stuff to something like the Windows "registry" when it's doing that? If so... what a stupid idea to have adopted anything remotely similar to the windows registry.

See 'man update_prebinding':

update_prebinding tries to synchronize prebinding information for
libraries and executables when new files are added to a system. Prebind-
ing information is pre-calculated address information for libraries used
by a given executable or library. By pre-determining where a function in
another library is destined to be placed, the dynamic linker does not
have to resolve symbols at application startup time, and the application
can launch faster.

[Angus_D]

Originally posted by pinlo:
A Mac in deep sleep probably consumes less electricity than the clock on your microwave (assuming you have one). I'm energy conscious too, but really -- it's negligible.

I think I read somewhere that unless you leave your comp in sleep for significant amounts of time it actually takes more power to boot it up again if it's off than just to wake from sleep.