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Powerbook maintence/mac maintence in general
- Thread starter ToddW
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You don't have to do much - After installing software or system updates I use Disk utility (in utilities folder) to verify and rebuild permissions - this can also help if you find some programs keep crashing on you.
I also use MacJanitor (find on versiontracker) Your mac will fine tune itself at different times of day - usually late night/morning hours. If you're like me you put your laptop to sleep when you go to be. I never shut down - just put it to sleep. MacJanitor will run all the built-in fine tuning thingies (techincal speak) anytime you want - I run it about once a week - don't know if it helps or not. There are some other programs like MacJanitor out there that all do similar things - I'm sure others will chime in on this.
OS X is very stable and needs little maintenence - gotta love it!
I also use MacJanitor (find on versiontracker) Your mac will fine tune itself at different times of day - usually late night/morning hours. If you're like me you put your laptop to sleep when you go to be. I never shut down - just put it to sleep. MacJanitor will run all the built-in fine tuning thingies (techincal speak) anytime you want - I run it about once a week - don't know if it helps or not. There are some other programs like MacJanitor out there that all do similar things - I'm sure others will chime in on this.
OS X is very stable and needs little maintenence - gotta love it!
Leaving your computer awake at night will let OS X run it's nightly/weekly/monthly scripts, which takes care of most things. But they only run when the computer is awake, early in the morning. MacJanitor and similar programs allow you to manually perform these scripts, it's not as convenient but some people can't leave their machines awake every night.
Repairing permissions helps when anything acts weird or flakey. Doesn't hurt to do it randomly. You can't do this too much.
Other than that, don't worry about it
paul
Repairing permissions helps when anything acts weird or flakey. Doesn't hurt to do it randomly. You can't do this too much.
Other than that, don't worry about it
paul
I use an app called Macaroni. It runs the cron jobs when you specify--for instance my daily might run at 7:00 if I'm not using the computer. If I am using it then it will wait for 10 minutes of inactivity or something like that. It also has scheduled repairing of permissions and removal of language packs.
There are other apps that do all these things, but not all together or with scheduling. It's the ultimate in "set it and forgt it."
There are other apps that do all these things, but not all together or with scheduling. It's the ultimate in "set it and forgt it."
Sounds like something very bad, doesn't it? Like what the police do to drunks in the cell. "Let's go cron job us a drunk."
The cron refers to time--chrono. Cron jobs are maintainence tasks that Unix systems perform at scheduled times. OS X has daily, weekly, and monthly jobs. If you leave your computer on 24/7, like Unix was meant to be, the jobs run at about 3am when they won't get in your way.
The cron refers to time--chrono. Cron jobs are maintainence tasks that Unix systems perform at scheduled times. OS X has daily, weekly, and monthly jobs. If you leave your computer on 24/7, like Unix was meant to be, the jobs run at about 3am when they won't get in your way.
Horrortaxi said:
But what happens when you are running a task like Folding during the overnights?
I believe the cron jobs run in the background, so it shouldn't mess with the Folding, other than maybe stealing some system resources.
Other than possibly poking at the cron jobs with the Terminal or one of the maintenance programs like Cocktail/Macaroni/etc every now and then (a good idea for those of us who close our laptops' lids and put them to sleep when not using them), and possibly repairing permissions once in a while, the only other thing is Software Update.
I've got Software Update set at the longest interval it allows, which is once a week, but only actually update once a month or so. Usually I check MacInTouch before applying any OS updates or security patches, just to make sure they haven't caused widespread problems.
And that's pretty much it. Except for regular backups....but that's a general computer thing, not a Mac-specific thing.
Other than possibly poking at the cron jobs with the Terminal or one of the maintenance programs like Cocktail/Macaroni/etc every now and then (a good idea for those of us who close our laptops' lids and put them to sleep when not using them), and possibly repairing permissions once in a while, the only other thing is Software Update.
I've got Software Update set at the longest interval it allows, which is once a week, but only actually update once a month or so. Usually I check MacInTouch before applying any OS updates or security patches, just to make sure they haven't caused widespread problems.
And that's pretty much it. Except for regular backups....but that's a general computer thing, not a Mac-specific thing.