Mac OS regular maintenance?

jim4pp

Member
I'm a freelance designer, so I have to be my own IT department. I am interested in what regular maintenance you do on your Mac work stations. I would like to know generally how often you repair permissions, etc.

Thanks for any input.
Jim
 
Re: Mac OS regular maintenance?

I repair permissions before and after any software install.

other than that, I don't do any "regular" maintenance.
I only do maintenance when needed, like if I need to clean font caches because i can't load fonts.
 
Re: Mac OS regular maintenance?

Other than what David posted, I run the Daily, Weekly, Monthly maint. scripts using Onyx when I think of it. I haven't really needed to use anything else with my MacPro.
 
Re: Mac OS regular maintenance?

I usually don't do anything (no even permissions)..

the only regular thing I do is run Font FInagler, but that is usually because I can't get quark to load a font.
 
Re: Mac OS regular maintenance?

Read these articles:

Software Update Tips and Voodoo
http://daringfireball.net/2004/12/software_update

Seriously, ‘Repair Permissions’ Is Voodoo
http://daringfireball.net/2006/04/repair_permissions_voodoo

I don't do anything special on my day to day system. On occasion I will reboot my system if I notice something isn't running as smooth. This is rather subjective, but I can usually tell when its time to reboot. I normally have 21+ days of uptime between reboots.

I've had OS X production boxes (web, file servers) that have been up for 200+ days without doing any special maintenance on them.
 
Re: Mac OS regular maintenance?

Make backups. That is it.

Automate it, do it every hour or two and store them offsite.
 
Re: Mac OS regular maintenance?

Yeah, backups are important too. Automating backups makes it effortless. It's easy to forget to do it for a few days. [SuperDuper! |http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/] is a great utility to mange backups.


A service like Amazon S3 is a great solution for offsite backups.
 
Re: Mac OS regular maintenance?

I'll run applejack when things seem to be acting funny. That has been working real well for me.
 
Re: Mac OS regular maintenance?

After a nasty experience last year, I now use Cocktail. The shareware version for a nominal fee gives you a "console" of stuff you can fire up when you want, or schedule to run as well. Includes Permissions Repair as well as cache cleaning functions.
 
Re: Mac OS regular maintenance?

I stopped verifying permissions a long time ago. SuperDuper! has the option to repair permissions before it does the backup, but that was just an enormous waste of time when the scripts run.
bq. Even if you “verify” permissions and it shows some that don’t match, it doesn’t mean they’re +wrong+. They might be wrong, but they might just be different but still OK. [#|http://daringfireball.net/2006/04/repair_permissions_voodoo|Seriously, ‘Repair Permissions’ Is Voodoo]
 
Re: Mac OS regular maintenance?

I repair permissions before and after any software install, also I run them weekly, just because that's my routine.
 
Re: Mac OS regular maintenance?

We use a regular routine based on experience with OSX (10.4.7 for PPC) and OS9.2.2 on separate internal hard drives. All job data resides on External FW and never on internals which are thusly kept clean and efficient. Fonts are stripped out of all aeras except essentials. Job fonts are stored per job within client folders.

Disk Warrior all three HD's once per month or if strange things happen when booting back and forth ( this is our trigger). This is a Godsend, IMO!
Once per quarter, Tech Tools Pro for optimizing the FW ONLY. We dump jobs after archiving leaving only an empty job folder for catalogue.
Once per year, verify permissions and repair only if necessary on Internal OSX.
Never ever allow classic to boot from OSX.
Hope this helps you,
John W
 
Re: Mac OS regular maintenance?

Run daily, weekly and monthly scripts (automatically with Onyx). Reboot now and then- yes, that is subjective. That's it.
...and btw repair permissions is not really a maintenance function.
 
Re: Mac OS regular maintenance?

Disk Warrior is my tool of choice. I don't leave home without it. SuperDuper also rocks as there is nothing better then having a bootable backup...just in case.
 
Re: Mac OS regular maintenance?

To sum things up MACs just run with very little effort from the operator....
 
Re: Mac OS regular maintenance?

Why never allow OS 9 Classic to boot inside OS X? I have done it for years without any problems.

Don
 
Re: Mac OS regular maintenance?

god bless Disk Warrior - john was correct - once a month or when things get wanky.
 
Re: Mac OS regular maintenance?

Classic will alter some files in the OS9 partition (Jag) or HD (Tiger) when you first try it.
Don't like that!
Font management is running X while job is real 9 = trouble. Seen the trouble on test bed at home.
Print window cannot be used (yes we still rpint directories on a laserwriter NTX! I found a way to print PS1 from OSX finally using a cheater pdf)
Networking if I recall had resource fork problems.
If some OS9 machines are running then Classic can have problems with them so it's all or nothing.

Aside: Mentioned before but here again, we load Font/DA mover 4.1 from OS6 into OSX and the suitcases show their icons again.
John W
 
Re: Mac OS regular maintenance?

I see what you're saying (if you have those problems).

When I first started Classic, I was asked if I wanted to use my Home folder (or not, which uses the OS 9 system folder on the hard drive that was copied over after installing OS X). I chose to use my Home folder, which copied stuff from the System Folder, so nothing in the System Folder got changed.

I haven't had any problems myself, and can print just fine from any Classic app. I keep Quark 5 (just in case I must use it, although I haven't in a long time), and print from Preps 4.2 in Classic daily with no problems (except maybe having to restart Classic if it doesn't see my dongle, which rarely happens).

Don
 

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