Mac OS X Routine Maintenance

[OK, I think we're starting to spin on this topic, so I'm going to be shutting the thread down.... -Adam]


On 7/16/06 10:31 AM, "Lucas K. Mathis" wrote:
> Please show me the technote where Apple tells its users to regularly run
> "Repair Disk Permissions."

    It's a good idea to repair disk permissions as a regular maintenance
    task after upgrading or installing new software.

That's taken from Mac Help right on your Mac; an online version can be read
at <http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh1928.html>.
(Similar references have been made in several other articles, so there's no
need to reply with "but that's a troubleshooting article" ;-)) The company
used to make an even broader recommendation -- that you should run it
"regularly" regularly, not just after installing software -- in a "Top 10
Tips to Keep Your Mac in Top Form" article, but that article was recently
revised to be less PR-unfriendly. (It sounds bad to publicly say that your
products need to be "repaired" on a weekly basis. And it's not really
necessary.) And, of course, Apple's tech support people also frequently
recommend that users repair permissions as a regular maintenance task.

I may not agree with Apple that it's necessary to regularly repair
permissions nowadays, but the company does recommend it. Claims otherwise
are common, but that doesn't make them true ;-)

(Convenient timing for me: I'm currently working on an article for Macworld
on "repairing" permissions, which actually addresses a number of issues
brought up -- on both sides -- in this discussion.)



>> It sounds like that was a bug in OS X 10.3.7, and that at this point
>> it has been rectified.
>
> I'd say it's not a bug per se. A developer at Apple saw that permissions
> were wrong and included a script to fix them. He did not expect that
> people would run "Repair Disk Permissions" periodically.

This is quite a stretch ;-) Apple specifically recommends repairing
permissions as routine maintenance in Mac Help -- agree or disagree, it's
there, on every Mac. The very first thing Apple's tech support usually tells
you to do if you call up with a problem is to repair permissions. And one of
the first things a Mac Genius at any Apple Store will do if you come in with
a software problem is repair permissions; it's part of the company's routine
troubleshooting process. One of Apple's software developers didn't think
people would repair permissions? No way. This was a bug, plain and simple.

At 10:31 AM -0700 2006/07/16, Lucas K. Mathis wrote:

> >>Resetting permissions may very well "hurt" something if they were
>>>changed intentionally, either by an application or by a user.
>>I'm not sure why an application would be changing permissions for
>>Apple installed software. Do you have an example?
>
>Yes, in fact. Apple uses tons of open source components in its OS - for
>example, the CUPS printing infrastructure. Some people chose to replace
>these Apple-installed apps with binaries from sources other than Apple
>(for example, for security reasons, or to get more recent versions than
>Apple distributes). Those new versions may have different permissions
>(for example to close security holes). "Fixing" permissions will change
>those permissions back, leading to problems.
>
>Obviously, if you compile, say, Apache from sources, you won't have the
>necessary .bom files. And even if you had a .bom file, "Repair Disk
>Permissions" would probably ignore it if you didn't replace Apple's .bom
>file, which is an even worse idea.
>
>You could argue that if you install Apache, well, too bad, you should
>know what you're doing. But that ignores things like Fink, or "user
>level" applications which install new versions of open source
>components. Your reply to that is that those applications are broken.
>Ignoring whether this is true: It doesn't change that these applications
>run just finde until you run "Repair Disk Permissions."

        For the record, I think overdoing RDP is not good (not evil
or apocalyptic, just not good). But Fink is very careful to stay
within /sw (or whatever directory you use), so it doesn't conflict
with anything else. If you compile your own software, it normally
goes in /usr/local (or even /opt).

        Replacing Apple-provided binaries in /usr proper is quite
tricky, and a super-power-user trick. It's much saner to put your own
stuff somewhere else and leave Apple's binaries alone. I think
Randy's entirely reasonable in expecting anyone who replaces
/usr/sbin/httpd to make their own judgement on RDP, so this seems
like an overreaction.


                                                Chris
--
Chris Pepper: <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/>
Rockefeller University: <http://www.rockefeller.edu/>

Randy B. Singer <randymacattorney.com> wrote:

> AppleJack is a great utility, but it is a command-line utility, as you

not exactly, IMHO...
it is a tool you can when booting in single user mode, then just by
typing "qpplejqck" (or "qpplejqck quto") on my foreign keyboard ;-)

> mentioned. My site is geared towards ordinary users, and my take is that
> ordinary users don't even want to hear the term "command-line." It
> scares the willies out of them.

it doesn't requires a thesis in Macintosh Programming, in my sense, to
reboot while pressing CMD + S, and typing "applejack" ;-)

Alright guys, I'm just a dumb user that has almost, <grin> been
convinced. I have Macaroni installed though and fix permissions is
one of the routine tasks that are programmed into this utility. This
was installed very early on in the life of OS X when it saved me from
lots of regular problems, all of which seemed to depart for good once
I installed it. Now you all say it is incorrect to repair permissions
except in specific cases.

But come on; if you can be so general there must be lots of times,
otherwise all you wise ones <grin> (sic) would be specific and
actually state when to do so, would you not?

Could some one actually provide a list of when it should be used, or
at least some of the problems that might be helped by the procedure.

Neil

At 8:31 PM -0700 7/13/06, Randy B.Singer wrote:
>> <http://applejack.sourceforge.net/>
>
>
>AppleJack is a great utility, but it is a command-line utility, as you
>mentioned. My site is geared towards ordinary users, and my take is that
>ordinary users don't even want to hear the term "command-line." It
>scares the willies out of them.

        Ah, when I quickly scanned the page I saw a reference to starting
up in "Safe Boot mode" and misremembered it as "Single User", so I thought
that if you were directing people on how to perform a fsck when things were
really screwy, that AppleJack might be of use. Since you only reference
single user mode as an aside, leaving out AppleJack might be warranted.


--
* Johann Beda - contact link: <http://xri.net/=j-beda> *
* Johann's MostlyMac Computer Consulting - <http://mmcc.beda.ca/> *

On 7/19/06 16:54, "Dom" <tbdomifree.fr> wrote:

>> mentioned. My site is geared towards ordinary users, and my take is that
>> ordinary users don't even want to hear the term "command-line." It
>> scares the willies out of them.
>
> it doesn't requires a thesis in Macintosh Programming, in my sense, to
> reboot while pressing CMD + S, and typing "applejack" ;-)

It's also not a good idea to blithely run Applejack when you have no idea
what it's doing. AppleJack does destroy data that may not actually be bad.

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

On 7/19/06 16:58, "Neil Bartlett" <the_macworksmac.com> wrote:

> But come on; if you can be so general there must be lots of times,
> otherwise all you wise ones <grin> (sic) would be specific and
> actually state when to do so, would you not?
>
> Could some one actually provide a list of when it should be used, or
> at least some of the problems that might be helped by the procedure.

Sure.

I abuse my Powerbook regularly, esp. with regard to setting up and killing
various user types, (local, Active Directory, Open Directory, etc.), so it's
not unusual for my permissions to be VERY off after a few months of that.

The last time I ran "Repair Permissions" was when I couldn't download and
save Software Updates because I didn't have write access to the directory
inside of /Library. I noticed a few other directories had bad perms, and
since I know that RP deals with them, I just ran it, no problems.

It fixes actual permissions errors quite well.

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

On Jul 19, 2006, at 5:54 PM, Chris Pepper wrote:
> For the record, I think overdoing RDP is not good (not evil or
> apocalyptic, just not good). But Fink is very careful to stay
> within /sw (or whatever directory you use), so it doesn't conflict
> with anything else. If you compile your own software, it normally
> goes in /usr/local (or even /opt).
>
> Replacing Apple-provided binaries in /usr proper is quite tricky,
> and a super-power-user trick. It's much saner to put your own stuff
> somewhere else and leave Apple's binaries alone. I think Randy's
> entirely reasonable in expecting anyone who replaces /usr/sbin/
> httpd to make their own judgement on RDP, so this seems like an
> overreaction.

I second this heartily. As a long-time Unix geek, I have tried
replacing things in /usr, and also in /usr/local, and I've found that
often enough even replacing things in /usr/local can be problematic,
at least on some systems. There isn't much that Apple puts there,
but Linux starts out by putting quite a few standard things there, so
on MacOS X it should be a reasonably safe place to put installations
that are to be available to all users of the system. When I want to
customize, I know I need to put my own versions in a place that will
not step on the toes of other users (on a multi-user system), or of
system software. Someone who goes down the path of customizing /usr/
bin/... or /usr/sbin/... is definitely taking the responsibility for
the integrity of the system into their own hands. If a normal
maintenance tool starts to give problems after that, then it should
not be blamed on the maintenance tool.

Geoff
.

On Jul 19, 2006, at 2:54 PM, Dom wrote:

> it doesn't requires a thesis in Macintosh Programming, in my sense, to
> reboot while pressing CMD + S, and typing "applejack" ;-)

I would guess that fewer than 2% of Mac OS X users know about holding
CMD-S at startup.

It would be closer to 80% of Applejack owners--and a higher
percentage of Applejack users--of course.

I worked by phone with one quite sharp Mac user in the 1990s who knew
C down at startup to force CD booting very well. But it wouldn't
work for him the day I was working with him. He finally diagnosed
the problem: because of the problems with the new machine we were
working on, he had put the old machine back on the desk beside it.

And he was pressing C on the wrong keyboard. ;-)

   --John

Hi Chris,

This is a naive question from a virtual know-nothing.  Reading what you said about conflicts, it occurred to me that my own problem might not be entirely off-topic.  If it is, I sincerely apologize.

I ordered something called Internet Cleanup, from Allume Systems.  It has a feature called NetBlockade, which started working immediately, though I hadn't installed anything, as far as I know.  This confused me.  (Part of the confusion was that I had just updated my Mac PowerBook G4 from OS 10.3.3 (I think) to 10.4.7.) 

Anyway, to make a tedious story short, the NetBlocade feature (whose Icon looks like like a horizontal barber's pole, but may be intended to represent a railroad blocker) was said to block pesky popups.  Actually, it blocks all sorts of things I want to see, including the Yahoo chess program.  I get the icon where the board should be.  The very stupid program can't distinguish some aspect of chess programs and the like from popups.  So literally, no more chess on this computer. 

I sought help from  Allume, but got no response at all. Then -- unwisely no doubt -- I tried to "uninstall" by removing every reference to Internet Cleanup in my hard disk.  Now there are no visible remnents of Internet Cleanup, but the NetBlockade is still in force.  What can I do?  Do I have to abort my system and start over?

Cheers,
gregh

Dom said:

>it doesn't requires a thesis in Macintosh Programming, in my sense, to
>reboot while pressing CMD + S, and typing "applejack" ;-)


On the other hand, there are simplier (more Mac-like) ways to do exactly
the same thing. So I recommend the simplier ways on my Web site, not the
more complicated one.



Randy B. Singer
Co-Author of: The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th and 6th editions)

ROUTINE OS X MAINTENANCE
http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html

On 20.7.2006, space aliens observed Neil saying:
>Could some one actually provide a list of when [Repair Disk
>Permissions] should be used, or at least some of the problems that
>might be helped by the procedure.

Basically, my own recommendation would be:

a) Use it when you encounter a problem for which Apple specifically
   recommends "Repair Disk Permissions" as a repair step
b) Try if it helps if you have problems which can't be solved through
   "normal" troubleshooting steps such as rebooting the computer

For example, the following Apple documents describe problems which could
be fixed by running "Repair Disk Permissions:"

If you have trouble opening applications or documents, or if your
computer is running slowly.
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=DiskUtility/10.5/en/duh17.
html>

If you have "printing issues."
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106714>

If your computer keeps freezing or if you see a flashing question mark.
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh1928.html>

However, in all the years I've been using Mac OS X, I've never
encountered a problem which "Repair Disk Permissions" was able to solve,
on any of my Macs, even back when I also booted into Mac OS 9.

lucas

--
"We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learnt to bear its ills without being overcome by them."
  -- Carl Jung, 1875-1961, Swiss Psychiatrist

At 3:02 PM -0700 2006/07/20, Greg Hutchinson wrote:
>Hi Chris,

Greg,

        I can't tell which Chris you're addressing. In case it's me,
I'll try to answer.

>I ordered something called Internet Cleanup, from Allume Systems.
>It has a feature called NetBlockade, which started working
>immediately, though I hadn't installed anything, as far as I know.
>This confused me. (Part of the confusion was that I had just
>updated my Mac PowerBook G4 from OS 10.3.3 (I think) to 10.4.7.)

        Well, placing a credit card order is (as of yet) unable to
directly affect the operation of your computer, so I'm assuming you
did *something* or NetBlockade is not relevant to your problem.

>Anyway, to make a tedious story short, the NetBlocade feature (whose
>Icon looks like like a horizontal barber's pole, but may be intended
>to represent a railroad blocker) was said to block pesky popups.
>Actually, it blocks all sorts of things I want to see, including the
>Yahoo chess program. I get the icon where the board should be. The
>very stupid program can't distinguish some aspect of chess programs
>and the like from popups. So literally, no more chess on this
>computer.

        Never used NB, but yes, that could be an unfortunate side
effect of a popup blocker.

>I sought help from Allume, but got no response at all. Then --
>unwisely no doubt -- I tried to "uninstall" by removing every
>reference to Internet Cleanup in my hard disk. Now there are no
>visible remnents of Internet Cleanup, but the NetBlockade is still
>in force. What can I do? Do I have to abort my system and start
>over?

        You probably have to call. If you get nowhere with the
support phone number, call Sales and ask for a refund (they took your
money in the first place), and (only if really necessary) threaten to
contest the charge and complain bitterly to your CC company. Sales
can probably make support answer you, even if they're normally
inaccessible.

http://www.allume.com/support/customer_service.html

        Another option is to look inside the installer (almost
certainly created by StuffIt InstallerMaker, so you should be able to
open it with "real" Stuffit, and perhaps extract the contents of the
installer by dropping it on StuffIt Expander. This might show you
what the names of the files you missed are.


                                                Good luck,


                                                Chris
--
Chris Pepper: <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/>
Rockefeller University: <http://www.rockefeller.edu/>

On Jul 20, 2006, at 4:02 PM, John C. Welch wrote:

> It's also not a good idea to blithely run Applejack when you have
> no idea
> what it's doing. AppleJack does destroy data that may not actually
> be bad.

AFAIK, AppleJack only destroys cache files. While this causes some
small nuisances (such as the Finder constantly asking if you're sure
you want to open each application 'for the first time'), it's hardly
destructive. The caches are automatically regenerated.

In fact, I've found that corrupted caches (especially the font cache)
are a relatively frequent cause of system problems, and are terribly
difficult to troubleshoot at a fine-grained level, so it's usually
far faster and more reliable to just chuck 'em.

Do you know of anything Applejack does which could possibly pose
lasting harm? (Ongoing debate about permissions repair aside, of
course.)

--Nik

On 7/22/2006 12:36 PM, "Nik" wrote:
>> It's also not a good idea to blithely run Applejack when you have no idea
>> what it's doing. AppleJack does destroy data that may not actually be bad.
>
> AFAIK, AppleJack only destroys cache files. While this causes some
> small nuisances (such as the Finder constantly asking if you're sure
> you want to open each application 'for the first time'), it's hardly
> destructive. The caches are automatically regenerated.
>
> In fact, I've found that corrupted caches (especially the font cache)
> are a relatively frequent cause of system problems, and are terribly
> difficult to troubleshoot at a fine-grained level, so it's usually
> far faster and more reliable to just chuck 'em.
>
> Do you know of anything Applejack does which could possibly pose
> lasting harm? (Ongoing debate about permissions repair aside, of
> course.)

Nothing that will cause "lasting harm," but I believe John's point was that
there's useful information in them thar files -- for example, AppleJack's
AUTO mode, instead of auto mode, deletes the Launch Services database, and
deleting it unnecessarily can cause you unnecessary inconvenience.

I use a Mac OS X. I just did a system search for the word cache. thousands and thousands of caches came up, many of them very large in size (MBs) ... A great many of them seem to be labeled stuffit. But there is nothing to identify the cache, and stuffit cannot open them. My question is ... how does one determine if a cache is necessary for the proper functioning of one's computer? I can't find anything that addresses this in the computer's mac help. Then, if one determines that a cache is not necessary how is it removed? Just drag to trash? Any help here will be appreciated

On 09 Sep 2006, at 13:24 , John Riddell wrote:
> I use a Mac OS X. I just did a system search for the word cache.
> thousands and thousands of caches came up, many of them very large
> in size (MBs)

Interesting. I have about 550, and most are Safari related. But
what do you mean, exactly by "a system search"?

> ... A great many of them seem to be labeled stuffit.

Labeled stuffit how, exactly?

> But there is nothing to identify the cache,

Well, the path to the file usually gives a pretty good idea.


> and stuffit cannot open them. My question is ... how does one
> determine if a cache is necessary for the proper functioning of
> one's computer? I can't find anything that addresses this in the
> computer's mac help. Then, if one determines that a cache is not
> necessary how is it removed?

What is the problem you are trying to solve here?

If you are looking at clearing some space, caches are not normally
the way to go, as they tend to get recreated when needed.

--
Use your key, unlock the door, see what fate might have in store.
Come explore your dreams and Creations, Enter the world of imagination.

John Riddell said:

>I use a Mac OS X. I just did a system search for the word cache. thousands
>and thousands of caches came up, many of them very large in size (MBs) ...

Yes, there can be quite a few cache files on your drive. For instance,
your Web browser can be caching thousands of graphics for reuse.
 
>A great many of them seem to be labeled stuffit.

When you say that they are "labeled Stuffit" do you mean that the icons
for the files your search turned up have a Stuffit logo on them, or that
they have ".sit" in the name, or what?

>But there is nothing to
>identify the cache, and stuffit cannot open them.

If there is nothing to identify them as being cache files, what search
parameter did you use to find them?

Caches usually exist at ~/Library/Caches.

>My question is ... how
>does one determine if a cache is necessary for the proper functioning of
>one's computer?

Caches do more or less what they sound like. They store frequently used
data to make it easy for a program to find and reuse this information.
This speeds up operations. If you eliminate the cache file, the
application will probably run slower in certain situations. However, in
time, through use, the cache should be rebuilt.

Sometimes caches become corrupted, most often when they become too large.
 This will cause erratic operation. The way to deal with this is to
delete the cache so that a new fresh copy will be rebuilt.

>I can't find anything that addresses this in the
>computer's mac help. Then, if one determines that a cache is not necessary
>how is it removed? Just drag to trash?

See:
http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html
Item #3

"If you aren't experiencing any problems, you may want to leave your
caches alone. Use your judgement" Also, if you don't understand which
files are cache files, and which aren't, I would leave things alone.

On the other hand, I often hear from folks who tell me that Safari, for
instance, has slowed to a crawl. Resetting Safari usually quickly fixes
this problem.
1. From the Safari menu, choose Reset.
2. Click the Reset button in the resulting dialog.
Doing this clears Safari's cache, among other things.

Or you could use a utility to clear caches.


Randy B. Singer
Co-Author of: The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th and 6th editions)

MACINTOSH OS X ROUTINE MAINTENANCE
http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html

After reading this thread, I checked my caches since I'd never done
it in the year I've owned my 20" iMac running 10.4.6. There are a
couple hundred miscellaneous caches (Safari, etc.), but there almost
10,000 "Microsoft Word document" items cached. I looked through the
Word preferences but couldn't find anything that obviously related to
caches. Why would Word have left so many items? Is there a danger
in deleting them? Should they be kept?
Dan Hardt

Dan Hardt said:

>After reading this thread, I checked my caches since I'd never done
>it in the year I've owned my 20" iMac running 10.4.6. There are a
>couple hundred miscellaneous caches (Safari, etc.), but there almost
>10,000 "Microsoft Word document" items cached. I looked through the
>Word preferences but couldn't find anything that obviously related to
>caches. Why would Word have left so many items? Is there a danger
>in deleting them? Should they be kept?


Where are you seeing these "cached" documents? Is there something in
their name, or where they are located, that indicates that they are
cached files? Do these files open in Word?

I don't have anything like this on my hard drive, even though I use Word
constantly.

I do know that Word creates temp files like crazy while you work, and it
deletes them when you quit Word. Word uses temp files to store undos and
to store intermediate versions of your file as a safeguard in case of a
crash.

Many years ago, under OS 8, there was a bug in the then-current version
of Word that caused temp files to be left all over the place instead of
being deleted when Word was quit. I recall that an update fixed that.

The same thing can happen if Word suddenly quits without being properly
shut down. Have you had a problem with Word suddenly quitting? (If so,
it is more than likely due to a corrupted Word preferences file.)





Randy B. Singer
Co-Author of: The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th and 6th editions)

MACINTOSH OS X ROUTINE MAINTENANCE
http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html