speeding up OS X

**murphs76** · September 28th, 2000, 12:00 AM

I've logged in OS X as "root" and OS X is executing faster. As a test to see how much faster it goes open the System Preferences control panel and click on the different options. After clicking on the same control panels several times they go even faster.

Does anyone know why? I'm thinking that when you login as "root" you are no longer in debug mode? Or maybe "root" is just closer to the kernel?

Murph

**wmoss** · September 29th, 2000, 10:02 AM

It's interesting that you see a speed up when logged in as root. Your two explanations don't seem to be very likely. The root user is ultimately a user like anuone else.

You won't be blocked from files that are secured from regular uses, but the system still must perform these security checks (your user name is not sufficient).

It's unlikely that root's processes are given a higher priority than other users on the system, but even if this is so there's only one user logged in so it's not like you're competeing for CPU time against others. You're only competing against the daemons and kernel processes/threads.

Perhaps Apple did make debug exceptions for root, but according to others root doesn't look very well debugged at all. Icons change unexpectedly. Applications start and stop showing their ".app" extension. Maybe these are just cosmetic things, but they would definitely make me nervous :-)

Besides the debugging problems though, being logged in as root is a dangerous thing to do. You don't want to do things like unlink the kernel or remove needed files in the various hidden directories (like /dev ). Being logged in as a normal user prevents you or the programs you run from accidentally trashing these files.

I won't say that it's insane to run as root, but you should have a very good idea of what you want to do to your system that you need this unprotected account.

**catfish** · September 29th, 2000, 02:43 PM

on my Little iMac- (Rev.B) it takes a long time (relative) to sort through permissions [says it's checking permissions for like 30 sec.! very annoying] when I open any settings... I think it's because it loads the permissions list every time you go somewhere new. If you go back, they come up pretty quickly. Logging in as root might be a no brainer for the computer, since it knows that Root has complete control and doesn't need to check.

**jeanmarie** · September 29th, 2000, 03:02 PM

I read here that you can speed up aapache by moving your web documents to something like /web. Couldnt this be tried with a user home directory ? I'm not sure where OS X stores the location of users' directories, but I bet this had to be done manually…

**franky** · October 1st, 2000, 08:16 PM

I can confirm that logging in as root indeed speeds OS X up. And it's pretty noticeable too.

Another thing I've discovered is this: In System/Library there's a folder called StartupItems that contains a few thing that load as the computer is booting. I tried making a folder which I called StartupItems.disabled and moved a few things I know I don't use, like Apache, AppleTalk and AppleShare there. Although I can't say I notice any speed diferrence, logically this procedure would at least speed up the startup time, as well as free up some memory and CPU.

**The DJ** · October 1st, 2000, 08:37 PM

Originally posted by franky
Another thing I've discovered is this: In System/Library there's a folder called StartupItems that contains a few thing that load as the computer is booting. I tried making a folder which I called StartupItems.disabled and moved a few things I know I don't use, like Apache, AppleTalk and AppleShare there

Wow there, that's not the way you're supposed to do that. If you want to turn off those services as they are called, simply open the /etc/hostconfig file and replace -YES- with -NO- on the service you don't want to use.
Then they will not be loaded on startup.
Only shutdown the services of which you know what they do, like the ones you named previously.

Under *nix like systems most things have a type of swith to turn stuff off.
You don't remove the TV from the room, just shut it down.

**Der_Kommissar** · October 1st, 2000, 08:51 PM

Will additional ram above 128 MB speed up OSX Beta? It is the window resize updates that drive me crazy. And is OSX faster on a G4 than on a G3 of the same speed?

**MasonMcD** · October 2nd, 2000, 08:25 PM

This *is* extremely odd. I've duplicated my user folder when I was in root, renamed root as OldRoot, and my user space folder as root, and logged back in as root. It's *much* snappier. Course I don't have *any* compromising services turned on, and I'm really the only one who uses this comp, so it's fairly safe. I'm not really a shareware whore, so the danger is reduced. Man, it's pretty snappy, I must say. Wonder why that is?