Scheduled maintanence tasks

[eyeon]

I keep hearing everywhere that OSX automatically runs maintanence tasks every night in the middle of the night, without the user knowing most of the time. My question is, how do I KNOW this is happening? Will those maintanence tasks still run if I'm currently using the computer (I'm on it every night very late)? Will they run if the computer is asleep? Is there a way I can change the time at which they run?

This has been a burning question for quite a while, I just keep forgetting to ask. Thanks a lot in advance.

[bousozoku]

The daily, weekly, and monthly (those are the names) maintenance tasks start running on an active machine at 03:14. Volume indexing runs at 04:30 on Saturday, I believe.

The tasks will not run while the computer is asleep.

[munkle]

Or you could just download an app like Onyx (http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/11582) or MacJanitor (http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/5856) to run the tasks for you.