Daily, weekly, monthly cron scripts???

Question

Level 1

9 points

Daily, weekly, monthly cron scripts???

I have no idea what these are or involve. I'm new to Mac. I got my Intel iMac 20" about a month ago. It is the first Mac I have owned. I love it and have been very pleased so far. My wife and I use it mainly in the evenings and will shut it off every night before we go to bed. I have been seeing people talk about daily, weekly, and monthly Cron scripts and I have no idea what they are. If I shut my computer down every night does that mean these scripts are not being checked?

Also while I'm here, how long should you let your computer sleep? I'm always afraid of leaving the computer on for long periods of time. Is it OK to leave your computer on for days/weeks at a time? For instance our computer would end up sleeping through the night and most of the day until we get home from work. Is this OK to leave it on for days at a time?

Sorry I'm new and a little naive when it comes to this new machine! Thanks for any advice!

iMac 20" 2.16gHz, 2GB RAM, 250 GB HD, Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Posted on May 16, 2007 11:58 AM

Reply

Answer 1

myhighway

Level 5

7,270 points

May 16, 2007 12:42 PM in response to wumpnutt

Prior to the Tiger OS and the Intel-based Macs, it might have been helpful to download a utility to perform the cron scripts on a routine basis, or to manually initiate them yourself. Neither is needed for your iMac. Your Intel-based Mac runs them as needed, so you won't be missing them if you shut down every night.

Being away from your computer for more than a day is probably good reason to shut down, otherwise sleeping it in between daily usage is not a bad routine. There wouldn't really be any limit to that, days, weeks, or months wouldn't normally matter. Many daily users never shut down or restart except at software update time. Keep in mind that one of the recommended solutions for some of the minor issues that can possibly come up is to restart your Mac. That and the software updates are the only times when it becomes helpful/necessary.

Reply

Answer 2

Dah•veed

Level 9

66,547 points

May 16, 2007 5:48 PM in response to wumpnutt

I am of a different experience, and so opinion, than myhighway. I found that the cron scripts were rarely run when the Mac is shut down at night or put to sleep. Mac OS X relys on a clock to run the cron scripts at the proper times. Shutting down or sleeping the Mac causes the clock to be reset each time. If the Mac does not run enough hours for the clock to trigger the scripts they never run. I verified this many times through terminal that they were not being run. The only way to insure they run with any regularity is to run the Mac 24/7. This is also verified by Dr. Smoke on his website, the X Lab.
I use a little app called Anacron to make sure that the scripts run. They have been run faithfully since. There are a number of other apps recommended to accomplish this on the X Lab website

Reply

Answer 3

wumpnutt Author

Level 1

9 points

May 16, 2007 7:24 PM in response to wumpnutt

What are these scripts and what do they do exactly? Also is there a way to see if the scripts are being run? How can I tell if any of the scripts have run or not and how often do they run? Sorry that was a lot of questions.

Reply

Answer 4

Dah•veed

Level 9

66,547 points

May 16, 2007 9:08 PM in response to wumpnutt

The X Lab link I gave you above answers every one of those questions.

Reply