Mac maintenance/CRON task confusion

[Steven Jackson]

Hi,

I know this must have been asked before, probably multiple times, but I can't seem to find a satisfactory answer.

I know that there are three CRON tasks (daily, weekly, monthy) that should run automatically, but probably don't (on a laptop, at least). I know there are about a million tools out there to force them to run, and that they can be run manually in the terminal (sudo periodic daily weekly monthly).

At present I am probably worry about this way too much -- I run the terminal command pretty much every time I power-up my machine (followed by repairing permissions, which is a whole other question...).

So, my question is: is this necessary. And more pertinently (as I've just ordered a new machine) will these commands run automatically on an iMac meaning that my manual tinkering is completely and utterly unnecessary?

Any help much appreciated.

Cheers,

Steve.

 

[Steven Jackson]

Apologies for shamelessly bumping my own post, but I was worried it might have been overlooked due to being posted in the middle of the night. If noone answers this time, I promise I'll let it die.

Steve.

 

[Macky-Mac]

Hi,

I know......At present I am probably worry about this way too much -- I run the terminal command pretty much every time I power-up my machine...

EVERY TIME you power up???????? WOW!!!.........I've NEVER run them........and I suspect that the vast majority of Mac owners never manually run any of them

 

[plinden]

Since Tiger these have been launchd processes, no longer cron jobs. There seems to be some issues with launchd.

I find that the daily, weekly and monthly tasks don't always run when expected and I think it's to do with the launch interval. I have these set to run when the Mac wakes up at 7am in the morning, but I see varying run times in the logs, which seems to depend on how long the Mac has slept during the day.

 

[ElectricSheep]

Launch Services is supposed to check if a scheduled job was missed, and then run that job the next time the machine is awake. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work that way just yet (Apple is working on bring this to launchd).

The solution for machines that spend a lot of time shut off or in sleep mode is to use Anacron.