Optimize your Mac OS X!

E

Ender at Eros

Registered
Required software: OnyX ( http://www.titanium.free.fr/ ) & Mac OS X

Once downloaded, install it, and open it.
You will need your administrator password.
After you enter your password, select the "cleaning" tab, and make sure that these are checked
  • Browser Cache
  • Download Cache
  • User Cache
  • Font Cache
  • System Cache
  • Kernel Cache
  • Core Files
  • Temporary Files
  • Force Empty Trash

Execute it (click the button bottom right), and once it's done it will ask you to restart your computer, do that. (Note: after you clear the cache, the first startup will be a bit slow, since it has to recreate it).

Then, open OnyX again, and select the 'maintainance' tab. Make sure these are checked:
  • Verify Permissions on Mac OS X
  • Optimize the System (Update, if it's your first time, choose "Complete Optimization")
  • Daily Maintainance Script
  • Weekly Maintainance Script
  • Monthly Maintainance Script

Execute these also. It may take a while to finish, while it's doing it, make something to eat, or something :p.
Once it's done, it will ask you to restart, do that.

Now your system is optimized and ready to go!
 
Thanks for the tip. Everyone here is singing praises of Onyx, so I think I will give this a try myself on my 10.4.3 system. Thanks! :D
 
I'm not sure clearing these caches will actually "optimise" your system at all. Surely, having these things cached means they'll load faster? Clearing the cache only forces the system to recreate the info in the cache. I have seen cases where clearing caches has fixed apps crashing, but these are pretty rare.

As for the daily, weekly and monthly scripts, Mac OS X will run these anyway, on a daily, weekly and monthly basis - without you even noticing.

I'm a bit of a skeptic when it comes to optimisation programs like this. I think they have a very real placebo effect, in that users of these apps might percieve a noticable improvement in speed when there is really no difference at all.
 
As for the daily, weekly and monthly scripts, Mac OS X will run these anyway, on a daily, weekly and monthly basis - without you even noticing.
Click to expand...

Only if the machine is on between 3 AM and 5 AM and set not to sleep.
 
OnyX optimizes your system in the MacOS X sense, but not in the Windows sense. In the MacOS X sense, the term optimize means to prebind your applications with their supporting frameworks. It has nothing to do with moving files so that they can be more quickly accessed. FWIW, Apple's position on Windows-type optimization is that it is not necessary and is likely to be counterproductive when performed on MacOS X hard drives.
 
If you clear ~/Documents/AppleWorks User Data, AppleWorks loads much faster... that's a case where clearing some type of cache improves performance :)
 
MisterMe: You mean harddisk defragmentation, not "Windows-style optimizing". ;)
 
You know, there could be a problem with being too proactive on your system.

I'm a firm believer that maintenance should be done on the manufacturer's schedule, not some 3rd-party's schedule. You wouldn't stand for a quickie oil change place telling you your oil should be changed every 100 miles when your manual recommends 3,000, yeah?

Mac OS X does all the maintenance things that Onyx does, only automatically. Why put me through the absolute agony of launching a program and clicking a button?

For the odd problem of a program not launching or something like that, I can see giving Onyx a shot... but for maintenance, let Mac OS X do it's own thing. As pointed out earlier, this does not defragment the hard drive (Mac OS X does this automatically, also) nor does it "optimize" anything in terms of speed. If you have a healthy copy of Mac OS X running, any perceived overall system increase after using Onyx would be just that: purely perceived.

The daily, weekly and monthly system scripts do run between 3am and 5am if your computer is not asleep, but they WILL run when a schedule is missed, if needed. Open "Console" and take a look at "daily.out," "weekly.out," and "monthly.out." You'll see that they keep up with their routines in a decently timely fashion. I've got logs of them running at 8am, 11am, 1pm and so on -- obviously due to the fact that my system was asleep at 3am (like it and I should be both!) and then ran at a time when the computer wasn't asleep.

Ender at Eros said:
Now your system is optimized and ready to go!
Click to expand...
The system was optimized and ready to go before the use of Onyx. ;)
 
ElDiabloConCaca said:
The daily, weekly and monthly system scripts do run between 3am and 5am if your computer is not asleep, but they WILL run when a schedule is missed, if needed. Open "Console" and take a look at "daily.out," "weekly.out," and "monthly.out." You'll see that they keep up with their routines in a decently timely fashion. I've got logs of them running at 8am, 11am, 1pm and so on -- obviously due to the fact that my system was asleep at 3am (like it and I should be both!) and then ran at a time when the computer wasn't asleep.
Click to expand...
I checked this on my machine (and also checked the daily.out log) and found that the processes do run.

Here is what I found in daily.out (just the run times):
Sun Oct 30 11:49:35 EST 2005
Tue Nov 1 14:46:27 EST 2005
Wed Nov 2 23:04:29 EST 2005
Thu Nov 3 13:23:03 EST 2005
Fri Nov 4 15:19:35 EST 2005
Sat Nov 5 22:03:53 EST 2005
Sun Nov 6 03:15:46 EST 2005
Tue Nov 8 12:31:39 EST 2005
Thu Nov 10 13:30:18 EST 2005
Sat Nov 12 20:25:38 EST 2005
Sun Nov 13 13:16:06 EST 2005
Mon Nov 14 13:03:38 EST 2005
Thu Nov 17 15:41:58 EST 2005
Fri Nov 18 18:04:33 EST 2005
Sun Nov 20 21:49:49 EST 2005
Mon Nov 21 12:39:12 EST 2005
Tue Nov 22 19:10:49 EST 2005

Taking a quick look at the run times above, and knowing that, most of the time, my machine is not awake when the process would normally kick off, I can see that the process still runs on an almost daily basis. What's even more interesting is that it seems to run when the machine would be idle. A perfect example is Monday, 14 Nov. The machine was definitely up and running, but may not have been idle for any long period of time until 13:03 (1 PM) on that day. I would have been using it the entire morning, and would have been at lunch for at leat 30 minutes by the time it ran at 1 PM.

Is it possible that if the machine is sleeping when the process is supposed to run, it not only waits until the machine is no longer sleeping, but both awake and idle for a certain period of time? Does the Mac OS wait until I am not actively using it run the process?
 
But if the logs say differently, state that the processes _are_ in fact run, anyway, what good's that link now? Seems that link is from the days of 10.1/10.2, and might not have been updated...
 
I notice at the bottom of that link, that it has been modified as of April 2005,
one would think Apple would keep it up to date.
 
bobw said:
Mac OS X performs background maintenance tasks at certain times if the computer is not in sleep mode. If your computer is shut down or in sleep at the designated times, the maintenance does not occur. In that case, you may want or need to run these manually.
Click to expand...
If we assume that this is current, how can we account for the logs that I posted. I have MacJanitor installed (it is mentioned in the Apple document linked to above), but I have not run it in over a month, and I would never have run it more than once a month anyway, so these almost daily processes were not kicked off by me. Any ideas?
 
dmetcher: what version of OS X are you using?

Anyone NOT using 10.4 experiencing the same kind of log activity?

Perhaps this is something new to 10.4, or perhaps 10.3 and 10.4...
 
I wrote a similiar application for Tiger called Mac HelpMate, and it does most of what Onyx does, but it can be automated to run on a schedule as well. It also has many diagnostic and troubleshooting tools in addition to optimization functions. We OS X users now have an embarassment of riches!

Sourcehound, author of Mac HelpMate http://www.macworkshops.com/machelpmate

ACSA, ACTC, MCP, APP, Mac IT Trainner and MacTech Columnist
http://www.macworkshops.com

Ender at Eros said:
Required software: OnyX ( http://www.titanium.free.fr/ ) & Mac OS X

Once downloaded, install it, and open it.
You will need your administrator password.
After you enter your password, select the "cleaning" tab, and make sure that these are checked
  • Browser Cache
  • Download Cache
  • User Cache
  • Font Cache
  • System Cache
  • Kernel Cache
  • Core Files
  • Temporary Files
  • Force Empty Trash

Execute it (click the button bottom right), and once it's done it will ask you to restart your computer, do that. (Note: after you clear the cache, the first startup will be a bit slow, since it has to recreate it).

Then, open OnyX again, and select the 'maintainance' tab. Make sure these are checked:
  • Verify Permissions on Mac OS X
  • Optimize the System (Update, if it's your first time, choose "Complete Optimization")
  • Daily Maintainance Script
  • Weekly Maintainance Script
  • Monthly Maintainance Script



Execute these also. It may take a while to finish, while it's doing it, make something to eat, or something :p.
Once it's done, it will ask you to restart, do that.

Now your system is optimized and ready to go!
Click to expand...
 
ElDiabloConCaca said:
dmetcher: what version of OS X are you using?

Anyone NOT using 10.4 experiencing the same kind of log activity?

Perhaps this is something new to 10.4, or perhaps 10.3 and 10.4...
Click to expand...
I'm running 10.4.3 on an iBook G4.
I never looked at the logs for anything like this with Panther, so I can't say that I have or have not seen it in an environment not running Tiger.
 
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