Uptime...

[Rower_CPU]

The single easiest way to prove to PC users that Mac OS X is more stable: Run "uptime" in the Terminal.

If you're one of those people who never shuts down your computer, you could have some impressive results. Here are some screen shots of my assistant's G3:

[Rower_CPU]

Here's another shot of the "Vanity Dockling":

[Mr. Anderson]

Thats impressive. Unfortunately, I'm running OSX only on my TiPB, so I shut it down often. I'll have to get OSX on my 450 at home soon, I've had that thing running for over a month with out rebooting, and that's on OS 9.

[Rower_CPU]

Originally posted by dukestreet
Thats impressive. Unfortunately, I'm running OSX only on my TiPB, so I shut it down often. I'll have to get OSX on my 450 at home soon, I've had that thing running for over a month with out rebooting, and that's on OS 9.

I usually just put my TiBook to sleep when I'm finished using it. Gotta love OS X wake from sleep!

[Mr. Anderson]

I guess I could do that, but I also boot to OS 9 now and again, I don't like running the apps from X. I'll be getting photoshop and Flash eventually and that will pretty much take care of me.

[sparkleytone]

this was last night, on an iBook 600 that is used CONSTANTLY. as you can probably see i am pretty hard on the machine too.

My iBook (http://www.macrumors.com/forums/attachment.php3?s=&postid=41572)

[eyelikeart]

I think the longest I've kept my TiBook on since I got it a year ago was maybe 4 days....with long sleep intervals...

I just don't like leaving it on for too...too long....

but my old tower I had I never turned off....

still...38 days straight is pretty impressive for an OS to be running!!! :p

[King Cobra]

My dad has a Powerbook G3 400MHz, which he uses for work and stuff. He hardly ever shuts it down. When he is not using it he puts it to sleep. And the machine has not been shut off for more than a minute since the last time I can remember!

I do like the way OS X gets up from sleep. (Actually, it's the computer!) In OS 9 I had to wait what would seem like trying to connect to the internet on dial-up! (Yes, I have it, and I want to switch.)

As for the half-gigahertz Cube I do not usually leave it unattended for a while, unless I am waiting for a long download to finish. Then I just let the monitor go to sleep and not the Hard Drive.
_________________

I have a hat with my name on it! It has been with me for more than three years!

[mac15]

I turn mine off at night and cause I install things all the time which require my computer to be restarted. But up for that long that awesome

[Ensign Paris]

My record was 21 days but then sound smart git (My friend from school) decided to turn it off for a 'Joke'

Sorry to upset you all but I have a Firey (Unix based print spooler) that has been operational for about 2.5 years without being restarted of turned off.

(Just a quick note, I have decomissioned the firey due to its Splash replacement arriving! (thursday

I have also just bought a new 36" printer.

Ensign

[Gelfin]

Originally posted by dukestreet
Thats impressive. Unfortunately, I'm running OSX only on my TiPB, so I shut it down often. I'll have to get OSX on my 450 at home soon, I've had that thing running for over a month with out rebooting, and that's on OS 9.

I only shut down my TiBook when a software update requires a restart. I think my record for uptime was 45 days (that I noticed), and an OS update made me restart. The clamshell iBook I have at home playing server just sits there indefinitely with the screen turned off. I've rebooted it once in the past six months or so, I think.

[Hemingray]

I WOULD keep my G4 on all the time except that the fan NEVER SHUTS OFF. I have an old model G4. Boy I sure won't miss this thing when I get a G5. :)

[mymemory]

Don't you have people an energy crisis in the US?

[Mr. Anderson]

California had some issues last summer, I don't know if its going to be that bad again this year. But not everyone is from CA.

I've been in my house now for over 2 years and the power has only gone out once (a transformer blew a couple of blocks away - probably a squirrel running on the wires).

[Gelfin]

Originally posted by mymemory
Don't you have people an energy crisis in the US?

The energy crisis in the Western U.S., particularly California, was mostly artificial. It's not that the power wasn't there to be had. It was just being held hostage to drive up the prices.

At the time, the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the organization that is supposed to prevent things like that from happening, were just refusing to do anything. Most of the people on the Commission were former executives of the very energy companies that were benefitting from the price gouging.

As far as being conservative, we're being power-friendly just by using laptops. And besides which, one reason my old iBook makes a good server is that it's got a builtin UPS good for 4 to 5 hours of blackout. :)

[Rower_CPU]

Originally posted by Gelfin


The energy crisis in the Western U.S., particularly California, was mostly artificial. It's not that the power wasn't there to be had. It was just being held hostage to drive up the prices.

At the time, the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the organization that is supposed to prevent things like that from happening, were just refusing to do anything. Most of the people on the Commission were former executives of the very energy companies that were benefitting from the price gouging.

I think that's why people started calling them "Gray outs", after Governor Gray Davis.

I agree, it was pretty much artificial panic created by a deregulated system (in san Diego anyway) that allowed out of state electricity vendors to jack up prices and a hot summer that required a lot of power for AC, etc.

[Rower_CPU]

Originally posted by Ensign Paris
Sorry to upset you all but I have a Firey (Unix based print spooler) that has been operational for about 2.5 years without being restarted of turned off.

Ensign

A print spooler is a little different from a desktop machine...he uses it as his daily workstation and leaves it on to access files from home...he says he's not upset...:p

[AmbitiousLemon]

the term gray out has been used for many many years. its not after the governor. a gray out is a floating temporary regualted poweroutage created when there is not enough energey to provide everyone with energy all the time. so small grayouts float from one area to another. (didnt you ever play simcity?)


i restart osx all the time (more than os9). i cant use sleep since sleep freezes osx everytime. the main reasons i restart are software updates, booting into os9 for dreamweaver or photoshop, or because i run out of ram. the main reason i restart is after running osx for a few hours of heavy use i end up using virtual memory with just a single app open since osx doesnt free up ram well. so i restart to keep from using virtual memory. kinda annoying actually. os9 was much better for uptime for me. id leave it running for months without a problem. (btw i have 512mb ram). after launching classic, mozilla, dreamweaver in classic, photoshop im into virtual memory. throw in iTunes, adium, mail.app and i have a major slow down. even quitting all the apps doesnt help since it doesnt free up all the memory. but the two worst things are classic and iTunes, i always need a restart after using one of these.

[Taft]

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon
i restart osx all the time (more than os9). i cant use sleep since sleep freezes osx everytime.
...

or because i run out of ram. the main reason i restart is after running osx for a few hours of heavy use i end up using virtual memory with just a single app open since osx doesnt free up ram well. so i restart to keep from using virtual memory.

What hardware do you have that would possibly cause OS X to crash after going to sleep? SCSI card or something?

Also, this virtual memory thing seems pretty crazy to me. I've never seen anything like that on my machine. Do you have the latest version of OS X? Have you tried process viewer or ps from the command line? What proof of this do you have? A load monitor? I have to say that I find a memory leak in the virtual memory system to be highly unlikely. That would be a *major* error.

I think your slowdown problem is more likely related to io operations or device access going awry.

Matthew

[Taft]

My up-time record is something like 5 or six weeks. I don't remember the exact figure.

Matthew

[AmbitiousLemon]

Originally posted by mrtrumbe


What hardware do you have that would possibly cause OS X to crash after going to sleep? SCSI card or something?

Also, this virtual memory thing seems pretty crazy to me. I've never seen anything like that on my machine. Do you have the latest version of OS X? Have you tried process viewer or ps from the command line? What proof of this do you have? A load monitor? I have to say that I find a memory leak in the virtual memory system to be highly unlikely. That would be a *major* error.

I think your slowdown problem is more likely related to io operations or device access going awry.

Matthew

no strange hardware. just a g3 powerbook.

im surprised none of you have noticed the memory thing. i guess i notice because im computer is so slow that if i use virtual memory the slow down becomes very obvious. there are a lot of applications that will tell you how much meory is aviailable, active, and inactive. you can also see how many page outs you have (virtual memory). its not a memory leak. osx just uses ram differently. memory is not being used "active" but it is not available. i guess it keeps some meory set aside for some reason. since i only have 512mb i can easily start using virtual memory just by launching a handful of apps. try checking how much memory is available before you launch an app, after you launch the app, and after you have quit the app. you will see that not all the memory that became unavailable when the app was launched is freed when you quit the app. if you launch and quit a lot of apps you can easily eat up 512mb of ram. also look at the difference between ram available and active ram. you will notice a huge amount of ram that is unavailable but not active. im not sure what this means. maybe cached information registers as unavailable but inactive, im not sure. since osx caches information after launching an app this would explain why you have less ram available after quiting an app compared to before that app was ever launched.

if you take some time to investigate ram usage on your machines im sure you will find the same thing regardless of what your hardware is. (o and btw for people who use gmem, it has a memory leak so dont touch it until it is fixed, memogram and memory usage getter are good if you are unfamiliar with the terminal)

[Choppaface]

ya wakeup in OS X on my G3 PB is *hella* fast :D

although i hardly ever use OS X on it because I need PS...so I just run 9.1

the other day i had 256 image files open in PS, all about 3 or 4 megs or so. due to heavy caching i got down to 20 megs left :D
(silly me I forgot to increase PS's RAM before this, so my comp had about 100 megs of RAM free (of 384 total) just sitting there unused...oh well)

I pulled out my airport card and the finder crashed and then came back up. things didnt look too bad, and I didnt want to spend another 15 minutes of waiting for all of the files to reopen in the future, so i just closed it making it go to sleep. the next day I opened it, edited everything, and then edited another 100 or so without it freezing. it finally did freeze though when I accidently pulled out the card too quick without dragging the icon to the trash (I have a Skyline card).... I must say that at times 9.1 can be pretty damn stable :D :D

[evildead]

I have Sun servers running Solaris 8 that are going on 130 days. I need to reboot them but I cant due to the need for availablity. Oh well, UNIX is very stable... thats to bottom line

[davidc2182]

:( my ibook is dead, i'm at the library all day typing up a paper, i get home, wake my ibook up and it freezes so i'm like no big deal and reboot and the screen doesnt turn on, so i figure i'd hook it up for an external monitor. that worked for like 2 minutes and then boom frozen again, so i try rebooting into classic, it freezes when loading up, i barely got the system to stay up long enough to email the essay to myself. So now here it is finals week and i've got a dead ibook, apple just repaired it around a month ago and its been acting funny ever since. now its dead :( should i try reinstalling or does this sound like a hardware issue? Father Macintosh why have you forsaken me!

[Beej]

My machine has been up for 6 days. I'll see how long I can keep it up. I'll keep you posted! (Cuz I know you're all hanging out to know when I restart my computer next ;))

[iGav]

I startup my machine, and at the end of everyday I shut it down......

I feel so Anal!!!:(

[Choppaface]

Originally posted by mymemory
Don't you have people an energy crisis in the US?

he he ya here in cali
last summer when I was at my mom's house I had my b&W G3 and my G4 on 24/7 and drove her electricity bill up more than tripple :D :D