What to do to keep OS X runnin in top shape?

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blackoutspy

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What should i be doing to keep my laptop running in top shape. At the moment I seem to be haveing problems when leaving my laptop on with out a reboot for over a day. Things seem to exponetialy bog down the longer i leave it on. I try repairing premitions because thats all i really know to do at this point. If someone could just give me a list of things i should regularly do with cron or something, that would be just great.
 
this sounds like you have lack of ram. I had the same issues on my 256mb ibook. After I replaced one 128mb with a 512mb memory chip I was able to use it for months without any reboot.
 
Blackoutspy

You need to give more info. What Mac do you have? What System are you running - 10.5, 10.2, 10.3, etc?
How much ram do you have installed?

Get Cocktail, or any cron programs from http://www.versiontracker.com to run the cron scripts, empty cache,etc.

Run fsck

To run fsck, you first need to start up your Mac in single-user mode. Here's how:

1. Restart your Mac.

2. Immediately press and hold the Command and "S" keys.

You'll see a bunch of text begin scrolling on your screen. In a few more seconds, you'll see the Unix command line prompt (#).

You're now in single-user mode.

Now that you're at the # prompt, here's how to run fsck:

1. Type: "fsck -y" (that's fsck-space-minus-y).
(If you're running Panther, v 10.3, then type this "fsck -f"

2. Press Return.

The fsck utility will blast some text onto your screen. If there's damage to your disk, you'll see a message that says:

***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****

If you see this message--and this is extremely important-- repeat running fsck. It is normal to have to run fsck more than once -- the first run's repairs often uncover additional problems..

When fsck finally reports that no problems were found, and the # prompt reappears:

3. Type: "reboot" to restart,

or type "exit" to start up without rebooting.

4. Press Return.

Your Mac should proceed to start up normally to the login window or the Finder.
 
Also Blackoutspy, if you are running Panther and you've installed it on top of Jaguar, then that's always a good source for problems.

Small updates [OS X 10.3.x] run repair permissions on your disk and install as usual.

Large updates [OS X 10.x] back everything up, clean install.

Bitter experience has made me wise...
 
Yeah i decided to do a little reading up before i went and made another post, and it seemd that most people had a problem because of installing a new version, but i have never installed a different version then what was shipped. Currently, i am running a 17" G4 powerbook @ 1ghz with 512mb of ram and OS X version 10.2.8. I just tryed "fsck -y" so we'll see if that did anything, even though it came up with no errors, you never know. Also, i hear people talking about programs such as MacJanitor. I can only guess these are progams to do normal mentinence and was wondering which program was the best.
 
I run the cron scripts through Entourage on a timed schedule, i check and prepair my permissions every so often. I have yet to have to restart due to a kernal panic or anything since i had panther, well maybe once, although I don't recall doing so. My uptime is almost 2 weeks right now, generally i restart and run disk repair tools to keep my system in check. So i'm overly satisfied with Panther... I just work, and my G4 is standing tall over all these years.
 
Urbansory said:
I run the cron scripts through Entourage on a timed schedule, i check and prepair my permissions every so often. I have yet to have to restart due to a kernal panic or anything since i had panther, well maybe once, although I don't recall doing so. My uptime is almost 2 weeks right now, generally i restart and run disk repair tools to keep my system in check. So i'm overly satisfied with Panther... I just work, and my G4 is standing tall over all these years.
Click to expand...

Exactly the same story here.

Panther has been ruthlessly solid and fast.

Mega happy with OS X...
 
Same here....

only had 1 kernel panic in all releases of OSX. OSX is very solid & reliable. I repair permissions every now and again, and when I do restart I 'fsck -f' Panther. Current uptime is 18 days 12 hours without any noticeable lag in performance. Longest in the past has been nearly 1 month, then damn update made me restart ;)

What's the longest uptime experienced by people here??
 
I'm working on my longest, I won't restart till the 3 week mark, i set 21 days in 10.1.3 surprisingly enough, but i had to restart to burn a damn CD in classic before I got my superdrive. But things are running fine and smooth for me.
 
I have to wonder what OS X 10.4 is going to be like, if Panther and Jaguar are anything to go by .. but that's for another thread...
 
One other thing you should consider is free disk space. For some reason on my iBook if I have more than 1.02 GB free the swap file maintains a reasonable size. But the mimute I drop below about 800 MB free space, the swap file baloons and reports that I have 300 MB free.

I have no idea why, but keeping my free space large makes a huge difference, and I have a lot of ram (even though I'd call it the minimum comfortable amount).
 
Well, if we're going to start bragging about uptime! :)

Before I updated to Panther, my dual USB iBook was running Jaguar.

I use it for presentations and the like. That went without a reboot for [at the very least] 6 months.

Yes, I used it. I'd pull it out and watch a DVD in bed; earphones in and get a full film out of the battery with about 30% left to spare.

Now with Panther installed, it's about 3 weeks and counting...
 
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