On Monday, December 9, 2002, at 08:49 PM, Diane Stinnett wrote: > What all is involved in maintaining OSX? I know a little about > permissions (can't you use the built in disk utility to repair > permissions?) and fsck -y, but I guess I don't understand all the > 'why's'. In 9, I knew the system, what maintenance I should do and how > often, how to repair basic problems. X has put me back to square one. > I would appreciate it if anyone wants to share any insights.
Mac OS X can pretty much maintain itself. As with any other Unix system, there are housekeeping scripts that run periodically -- daily, weekly and monthly. Unfortunately, they're set to run in the morning at 3:15 (daily), 4:15 (weekly) and 5:15 (monthly). If your computer is asleep at these times, you can run them by hand at other times, or reschedule them, if you know how to edit root's crontab. For most people, getting a program such as MacJanitor is probably a better idea. It gives you a graphical interface to run the scripts. You can find it via VersionTracker. Unix systems, like the Darwin kernel of Mac OS X, are designed to run pretty much forever, untouched by human hands. I have the feeling that Darwin isn't yet at the level of robustness of Linux or Solaris, but it's still pretty good. The Linux server this list runs on has gone as much as a year between reboots. A story that demonstrates this happened at (I think) the University of Michigan. They had a Unix server that was accidentally walled in when some remodeling was done. It ran fine behind the wall for several years before somebody doing inventory went looking for it. The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will be January 28 For more information, see <http://www.aye.net/~lcs>. A calendar of activities is at <http://www.calsnet.net/macusers>.
