How safe is to leave Mac running all the time?

Its completely okay.. Actually its better for the hardware to constantly be running (HDD aside). When you turn your machine on and off the parts inside heat and contract causing wear and tear and can cause premature failure.

The hdd constantly spinning can cause it to die quicker because of its moving parts, but thats what power management is for

 

I've been doing this with all of my computers for years. The only time I ever reboot my Mac is when security updates require it. The only thing you have to worry about is that if you live/work in a dusty environment where the computer is you'll need to blow it out with some airduster every once in a while so you don't burnt out any of the fans from dust buildup.

 

I don't think leaving it on or turning it off makes any appreciable difference as to the components lasting longer. The only safe bet is you run up your energy bill.

If you are talking about being on a DSL or cable modem line, OSX and Macs are generally safe to be left on, if you have the firewall in OSX and on your router enabled. Sleeping Macs are safe.

 

shouldnt be a problem, i keep my laptop on all the time i just set it to kill the display after inactivity

 

I always put my powerbook asleep when I dont use it, so it runs 24/7... Didn't notice any problems so far.

Enjoy your Mac

 

OS X also runs the daily/weekly/monthly cron scripts between 3:15-5:30 AM, so leaving your machine on 24/7 allows the OS to keep itself tidy.

 

My computer is usually on 24/7. I shut it down for a short period of time once in a while.

 

Add another person to the list who leaves his computer on 24/7. My record for my old Quicksilver G4 is 125 days between rebooting ( yes I delayed installing a couple of security updates).

 

To run them all when you want it to, type this in the terminal: sudo periodic daily weekly monthly
Type in your password and wait until it finishes!

Enjoy!

 

Sleeping and Scripts?

If the machine is sleeping, does it still run these scripts?

Thanks,
hughdogg

 

No, but you can also use them manually... see my previous post

More Info:

Periodic system maintenance is scheduled by 'cron' (see Week 33). Cron launches a program called 'periodic' which is responsible for launching the maintenance scripts.

% cat /etc/crontab
...
#minute hour mday month wday who command
# Run daily/weekly/monthly jobs.
15 3 * * * root periodic daily
30 4 * * 6 root periodic weekly
30 5 1 * * root periodic monthly
...

The daily script is run at 3:15 am.
The weekly script is run at 4:30 am Saturday.
The monthly script is run at 5:30 am on the first of each month.

Your Mac must be running (not sleeping) for these scripts to be run.

The output from these scripts can be found in:
% ls /var/log/*.out
/var/log/daily.out /var/log/monthly.out /var/log/weekly.out

 

Unless a software requires it, or a software or system update.

Other than that its running 24/7, have never gotten any system crashes yet *knock on wood*

 

Leaving your Mac on 24/7 won't be a problem as long as you follow these three rules:





1) Never expose it to too much light.

2) Never get it wet. If you do, clones made by eMachines will appear.

3) Never, Never feed it after midnight. If you do, it will turn into a Dell.

 

If 'cron jobs' are not run is it a bad thing overtime, in the short run, or both?

 

That made me laugh.

 

If i'm gonna be gone for more than 1/2 hour i sleep it. If I'm gonna be gone for more than 24 hours then I turn it off (if i remember). There's a HUGE difference in power consumption when you compare a sleeping computer with a powered on computer... and when you are starting a computer up it will use like 10x as much power as when it is fully powered on and just doing light work and like 100x as much as when it is asleep... just that 1 minute of startup time is like 2 hours of sleep time. Not to mention the hassle of waiting for the computer to boot and reopening your applications.

 

Is that midnight EST, or midnight Pacific time, or midnight Greenwich time? And it's always "after midnight"... it might be 23 hours and 59 minutes after midnight.

 

does that mean you always "let it all hang out"? Since it's always after midnight?

 

Actually, it's "hang down":

"After Midnight" lyrics

And no, I'm not gonna do that... they're your rules, after all.

 

Or if you are worried about messing around in the console, you an download an app like Onyx to give a GUI interface for running your maintenance scripts. You should be able to find in on MacUpdate.com

 

Actually, you're wrong on that point. The HDD suffers the most stress from being powered on/spinning up. Constant spinning up/down can cause premature failure but usually just causes the drive to "whine" after a while. Like the rest of the computer, its best to leave it running 24/7, including the hard drive

 

Actually they're the old Chinese dude's rules, applied to the context of Apple hardware, in a humerous manner. Thereby turning a pop culture reference into geeky Apple joke.

 

LOL, NICE! well done