Comments on: The “find” process in Mac OS X

By: MOKA

MOKA — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 03:37:31 +0000

Thanks guys…

I had downloaded OnyX but never used it, so ran it today and will do so manually as required.

MOKA

By: BjarneDM

BjarneDM — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 23:31:17 +0000

@author : editing /etc/defaults/periodic.conf isn’t recommended
to override settings in that file put the altered settings in /etc/periodic.conf . that’s much safer and the recommended way.

you can add your own script to the schedules by putting symbolic links to them in these folders :
/etc/periodic/{daily|monthly|weekly}
/usr/local/etc/periodic/{daily|monthly|weekly}
the last folders don’t exist by default and has to be created, but they are configured in /etc/defaults/periodic.conf

the script in these folders are executed in alfabetic order. if you look at the system installed scripts you’ll see that they are prefixed with a 3-digit number. that’s the preferred way to indicate executing order.

By: MOKA

MOKA — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 19:17:40 +0000

Hmmm, I have been wondering if I should or if OSX was smart enough to know and run them when its on.

Thx for the info…
MOKA

By: Chris

Chris — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 12:15:00 +0000

If you always shutdown your mac in the earlier morning, maintain script won’t be run forever, so you should launch them manually.

By: BjarneDM

BjarneDM — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 09:59:27 +0000

@MOKA : if you shut down the periodic processes won’t ever get run

@author : the periodic schedules aren’t guided by periodic.conf
the periodic processes are run by launchd and are here :
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.periodic-{daily|monthly|weekly}.plist

to change the scheduled times you can edit these three files

several GUI-utilities exist (Onyx etc) that can run these maintainance scripts outside of the scheduled times

otherwise, you can run them manually from Terminal. You’ll need to be an admin or root : sudo periodic {daily|monthly|weekly}

By: MOKA

MOKA — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 20:06:06 +0000

You said “however if you sleep your Mac, you may notice the process appear upon the system waking”, but what happens if you ALWAYS shutdown your mac every night… will these daily, weekly and monthly tasks EVER get to run… ?

Thanks
MOKA