So ive just recently gotten my first mac a completely kick a** ibook and I wondering about essential maintainece that I should do and how to do it. Ive never been great about maintaing anything about computers except their physical well being. Probly because I never trusted my windows machine enough to put something important on it. And because I knew that I would always be reformating every 6 to 12 months (limewire).
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Essential mac maintanence?
- Thread starter AP_piano295
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What do you run Onyx for?
There's really no maintenance you need to do with OS X unless you're concerned about the daily, weekly, monthly nightly (actually around 4.30am) routines not running because you have shut down your Mac (if you only sleep it these tasks will run when you next awaken it apparently).
If you want to run these tasks manually just do it in Terminal which is in your Applications/Utlities folder.
Launch Terminal, in the Computer > Mac OS X > Applications > Utilities folder.
1.At the prompt, type the following, exactly as written:
sudo periodic daily weekly monthly
2. Press Return.
3. Type your Admin password when prompted, then press Return.
All three scripts will run in sequence. There is no visual feedback while the scripts execute. You will know they are completed when the Terminal prompt returns.
You can also run the scripts individually. For example, to run just the daily script, you would type the command
sudo periodic daily
in step 3 above.
There's really no maintenance you need to do with OS X unless you're concerned about the daily, weekly, monthly nightly (actually around 4.30am) routines not running because you have shut down your Mac (if you only sleep it these tasks will run when you next awaken it apparently).
If you want to run these tasks manually just do it in Terminal which is in your Applications/Utlities folder.
Launch Terminal, in the Computer > Mac OS X > Applications > Utilities folder.
1.At the prompt, type the following, exactly as written:
sudo periodic daily weekly monthly
2. Press Return.
3. Type your Admin password when prompted, then press Return.
All three scripts will run in sequence. There is no visual feedback while the scripts execute. You will know they are completed when the Terminal prompt returns.
You can also run the scripts individually. For example, to run just the daily script, you would type the command
sudo periodic daily
in step 3 above.
Yes, everything can be done in Terminal, but many users are not comfortable with Terminal.app and unix commands, and some - like me, who aren't uncomfortable with terminals - just prefer the ease-of-use in apps like OnyX or MainMenu (my favoriteBern said:
). Repairing permissions (the most common maintenance task) is also much easier with OnyX/MainMenu then with Disk Utility/Terminal.
And, just to add to the emphasis, the most important thing is to have reasonably current backup of all your essential data!
What is the exact time those periodic scripts should run actually? 3.00AM? 4.00AM? or 4.30AM?Bern said:
I am comfortable using MacJanitor to do those periodic maintenance. I just couldn't get it running automatically though.
My only suggestion would be to clean your machine occasionally with a cloth, only maintainance i do
Enjoy your machine, it's a nice change
Enjoy your machine, it's a nice change
I had a discussion with another member about this, and we are pretty sure that the scripts run when they can. Meaning, if they are missed because of sleep or shutdown, they will run later.fayans said:
IMO yes and I agree with Mitthrawnuruodo on this.Bern said:As opposed to opening Disk Utility in your Applications/Utilities folder?
Yes, it's easier, especially for the not so technically inclined. Disk Utility is not the most user friendly piece of software on a Mac. OnyX, and even more so the pre-authorized MainMenu is far easier. You cannot make it much easier than this (Bern said:As opposed to opening Disk Utility in your Applications/Utilities folder?
):Attachments
Mitthrawnuruodo said:Yes, it's easier, especially for the not so technically inclined. Disk Utility is not the most user friendly piece of software on a Mac. OnyX, and even more so the pre-authorized MainMenu is far easier. You cannot make it much easier than this (
So I guess that means no one but me uses the terminal to repair permissions?
diskutil repairPermissions disk0s3
I feel it is much faster. Probably just in my head though.
I used to do it, and / is easier to type than diskxxx, but I don't you need sudo to get it to fix all permissions?grapes911 said:So I guess that means no one but me uses the terminal to repair permissions?
diskutil repairPermissions disk0s3
I feel it is much faster. Probably just in my head though.
Like this:sudo diskutil repairPermissions /
But after I found MainMenu, even Terminal is too much of a hassle...
Værsågod...yoak said:
I think you are right, but I'm not sure. I don't do it manually. I made a script called maintenance and saved it in /etc/Mitthrawnuruodo said:I used to do it, and / is easier to type than diskxxx, but I don't you need sudo to get it to fix all permissions?
sudo diskutil repairPermissions /
#!/bin/bash
# start
say "now entering custom maintainance"
# repair permissions
diskutil repairPermissions disk0s3
# software update
softwareupdate -ir
# update prebindings
update_prebinding -root /
# end
say "custom maintainance has finished"
Then I added to my crontab and run it as root
# minute hour mday month wday who command
00 3 * * 3 root /etc/maintenance
Repair Permission, update prebindings, and download software updates with out doing anything. Truly the easiest and laziest way to do things.
That script looks very technical and I wonder how many users know how to write such script. I wish I could.
Actually, not to sound arrogant, but it a very easy script.fayans said:That script looks very technical and I wonder how many users know how to write such script. I wish I could.
#!/bin/bash - this is needed for all bash scripts. #!/bin/sh works too. After this line, all lines staring with a "#" are comments so I'll ignore them.
say "now entering custom maintainance" - say "X" will force the Mac to speak whatever in in the quotes.
diskutil repairPermissions disk0s3 - Tell Disk Utilities to Repair Permissions on disk0s3. disk0s3 means the first disk (we usually cound from 0 in the computer world), 3rd partition (I'm think it is because there are 2 hidden partition on Mac formated drives). It you have a 2nd partition, you'd use disk0s4.
softwareupdate -ir - runs software update. the i means install the updates. The r means all recommended updates.
update_prebinding -root / -I'm not sure about this one. I copied it from someone else.
say "custom maintainance has finished" - Make the computer talk again.
I hope this helped some. I really recommend everyone to learn some sort of scripting language (I prefer bash) and the terminal. You'll be amazed at what you can do.