Techsurvivors

Archives => 2008 => Topic started by: Johanbgoot on November 05, 2008, 06:28:29 AM

Title: Maintenance
Post by: Johanbgoot on November 05, 2008, 06:28:29 AM

Hi everyone,

I purchased a 24" 2.8ghz iMac running 10.5.5, it has 4g of ram and a 320 gig hard drive.  Other than a minor problem installing Boot Camp it has run flawlessly. I have downloaded Onyx but have only run it once.  Any updates have installed without incident.  Permissions are repaired before and after any installation.  The iMac remains on 24/7 and is restarted once a week.  I have 2 external fiwi drives, a 500 gig to back up using Time Machine, and a 640 gig for my son's music and movies, etc. My question is, do I need to do any maintenance? And if so, what?  I am planning to purchase a copy of Diswarrior, but do I really need to?

Awaiting your expertise,

Johan

Title: Maintenance
Post by: Paddy on November 05, 2008, 02:44:53 PM

Johan, as long as things are ticking along, you seem to be doing just fine. The system does its own maintenance during the wee hours.

As for DiskWarrior - I consider it somewhat similar to having insurance. You don't need it most of the time, but if you don't have it when you DO need it, you're up a creek, because it can fix things no other utility can - the alternative is reformatting drives and losing data. Of course the difference between DW and insurance is you can always go out and buy it after the problem appears. (However, that entails a wait)

Title: Maintenance
Post by: george on November 05, 2008, 03:08:33 PM

Paddy, I have the same set-up as Johan but am pleased to hear that maintenance is carried out automatically whilst I am abed. Does this require that the iMac be "asleep" or it switched off but still switched on at the mains.
George

Title: Maintenance
Post by: Xairbusdriver on November 05, 2008, 04:38:43 PM

Actually, since 10.4.5, the OS keeps track of when the last maintenance scripts ran. So you don't need to keep it on 24/7. The next time it starts up, it will notice that at least one of the routines is out of date and run the necessary script. They used to be based on a different Unix method and called cron jobs, the change back then was to a different method of calling the scripts, launchid, or something like that. I'm too lazy to look it up.

Title: Maintenance
Post by: Gregg on November 05, 2008, 07:56:27 PM

QUOTE(Paddy @ Nov 5 2008, 02:44 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The system does its own maintenance during the wee hours.

QUOTE(Xairbusdriver @ Nov 5 2008, 04:38 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Actually, since 10.4.5, the OS keeps track of when the last maintenance scripts ran. So you don't need to keep it on 24/7. The next time it starts up, it will notice that at least one of the routines is out of date and run the necessary script.

So this happens "behind the scenes"? I've never experienced an extended boot up time that could be explained by such automated maintenance operations.

Title: Maintenance
Post by: george on November 06, 2008, 02:10:14 AM

Thank you Jim.

Title: Maintenance
Post by: krissel on November 06, 2008, 02:11:49 AM

"Wee hours"?  What are they?  

Title: Maintenance
Post by: george on November 06, 2008, 03:37:37 AM

Krissel,
Those are the hours during which you are banging away on the keyboard on our behalf.
   
George

Title: Maintenance
Post by: krissel on November 06, 2008, 04:27:18 AM

Oh, yeah....  

Title: Maintenance
Post by: Gregg on November 06, 2008, 06:57:57 AM

QUOTE(krissel @ Nov 6 2008, 02:11 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

"Wee hours"?  What are they?  

Those are the ones during which you get less done, because they're smaller.

Title: Maintenance
Post by: Xairbusdriver on November 06, 2008, 09:33:32 AM

Those 'hours' used to be around 3 or 4 am. That's when the Unix people thought the machines would be least active. But most of the 'actions' are fairly innocuous and not much more than 'rotating' logs and deleting old ones. It's not like a Permissions Repair or even a RAM check (which happens on startup, I believe). You shouldn't notice any slowdown even with an 'old' machine. I'm sure there are some useful information, that explains this with much more veracity than me, in the Apple Knowledge Base articles.
<More than you want to know?>