Q: Execution of maintenance scripts in Lion
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Feb 20, 2012 10:02 AMby thomas_r.,If you are putting your machine to sleep at night, when they would normally run, they should run at the next available opportunity. However, note that those scripts are almost completely useless except for very niche purposes on a modern Mac. For more information, see:
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Feb 20, 2012 10:04 AMby dubwisedude,Hi Tony,
the discussion of the timed maintenance is an old one and does no longer apply. Since I have this Imac (2009), the scripts executed whenever the machine ran, independent of designated time slots. While it is true that, in the past and with certain os, maintenance scripts ran at special times only, Apple has since changed their behaviour to facilitate a steady and regular automated maintenance. In may case and, as I said, since the latest complementary update to Lion, the scripts have ceased to perform altogether unless forced via Maintidget.
Any other idea anybody?
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Feb 20, 2012 10:11 AMby macjack,HelpfulAre you sure they didn't execute or are you taking the widget's word for it. Rather than assume, it's not happening because a widget reports it, I'd tend to assume the widget is incorrect. When was the last time you updated the widget. Those scripts are now handled by a different process in the directory structure, if memory serves me.
EDIT:
You can see exactly what each script is doing and when, by looking in Console > daily.out, monthly.out and weekly.out.
My weekly & daily executed today
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Feb 20, 2012 10:12 AMby thomas_r.,Helpfulthe discussion of the timed maintenance is an old one and does no longer apply.
Sure it does. Those scripts are ancient carry-overs from the early days of Unix and have not been changed much since then.
Also, macjack has a good point. Verify what the widget is telling you. Paste the following command into the Terminal to find out when they last ran:
ls -al /var/log/*.out
The output on my machine is:
Hyperion:~ thomas$ ls -al /var/log/*.out
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 355773 Feb 20 06:05 /var/log/daily.out
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 1352 Feb 1 06:07 /var/log/monthly.out
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 2697 Feb 18 09:31 /var/log/weekly.out
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Feb 20, 2012 10:15 AMby dubwisedude,Hey mcjack,
you may have a point there. Maintidget's latest release dates from March 2010 and the developer admitted that incompatibility problems with Lion have occurred recently. However, I can execute the scripts manually from Maintidget. Any other suggestion for monitoring and verifying the scripts' activity?
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Feb 20, 2012 10:29 AMby thomas_r.,If your machine is turned off at night, that's why. Do you put it to sleep or shut it down overnight? Putting it to sleep should allow those scripts to run at the first opportunity after they were scheduled to run.
If you're dead-set on forcing these scripts to run, and they aren't doing so automatically for some reason, just run these three commands in the Terminal every now and then:
sudo periodic daily
sudo periodic weekly
sudo periodic monthly
Note that you do not need to do that very often, since they do not have a particularly important purpose anymore.
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Feb 20, 2012 10:37 AMby dubwisedude,I turn the machine off because putting it to sleep only at night caused me another problem in the past. I sure can run the scripts manually, but my main point is that they performed in the past whenever the machine was running and independent of time slots. The daily script performed when I opened the machine in the morning, the weekly and the monthly likewise whenever their time had come. Now, nothing happens anymore unless I force the scripts manually. I'll keep observing this...
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Feb 20, 2012 10:43 AMby Courcoul,I hate widgets doing their evil stuff and consuming resources behind my back. Hence, my Dashboard is quite sparsely populated. As for the scripts in modern Lion days, they seem to run when they're supposed to without having to depend on the Mac being turned on at ungodly hours before dawn. I use Onyx to either run them or verify that they ran (amongst other things).
