General Maintentance & FTP

[MrJuggles]

My wife thinks I'm reading something like TheOnion the amount I've been chuckling to myself this is great.....

Whats a safe way to shut it down?

Hold down the power button until it turns off.

But anyway, onto my naive first posts, I've put them both in one because I'm guessing they won’t be too taxing.
Can anyone give me some good maintenance tips for keeping the Mac clean, tidy and efficient? I know the salesperson said there was no need for defragging or disk cleanup (being a four day old Mac user I'm really aware of still being in the incredulity stage), which I used to do fortnightly at least to be sure, if not a little retentive. Now however I was wondering if it would make a difference if I went through all my files and removed the things I really wouldn't need, such as .pdf's in French, German, and Spanish. As well as removing any programmes I was sure I wouldn't be using.
Any other, good habits to get into would be greatly appreciated.

Secondly, can anyone recommend any good, free, or cheapish ftp programmes for the Mac. Nothing big, because it's only domestic use, but any quirky feature will always win me over.

Cheers again

[fearlessfreap24]

check www.opensourcemac.org for the ftp program.

as for the maintenance, leave your mac turned on so the maintenance scripts can run at night.

[baggss]

Your best bet for maintenance would be an App like COCKTAIL. It allows you to run all the CRON scripts for the UNIX side of the house and will repair permissions, clear caches etc.

As for FTP, I'd recommend either FETCH or even better, TRANSMIT. Neither are free, but both are good and worth the money.

[MrJuggles]

Your best bet for maintenance would be an App like COCKTAIL. It allows you to run all the CRON scripts for the UNIX side of the house and will repair permissions, clear caches etc.

Would that be good if I'm still at the "don't have much of a clue stage" I'm aware of permissions (I think) and understand caches, but CRON scripts for the UNIX side could have been said the other way around and I wouldn't have a clue. :dummy:
I suppose a good question would be, what would be a good and simple place to start playing/learning these things? Like publications to read or things to try out? Somewhere to start my learning curve

[iWonder]

just read the forums constantly, thats what i did and i rarely have any questions that havent been answered other than the couple of random questions.

[Brown Study]

Hi, MrJuggles

. . . .CRON scripts for the UNIX side could have been said the other way around and I wouldn't have a clue.

Crons is short for chronologicals, programs that rotate housekeeping files and that run in the wee hours of the morning, if the computer is turned on. The daily cron runs or should be run once a day; the weekly, once a week; and the monthly, once a month. The daily and monthly crons take seconds. The weekly cron takes longer.

There are lots of applications that will run the crons when you want to run them, including MacJanitor and Cocktail. MacJanitor, among others, is free.

If the system ever needs repair, Disk Utility must be run from the DVD, and to do so, the machine must be booted from the same DVD. A program that gets around this pain in the reluctance is the free Applejack.

After installing, Applejack does not appear in the Applications folder or anywhere else. It doesn't show up until you start the machine in "single-user mode," which stops the boot progression just before the graphical user interface kicks in.

Single-user mode is invoked by holding down the command (Apple) key and the s key as the machine starts, and you hold them down until lines of text scroll up the screen.

By typing Applejack after the text stops scrolling, the Disk Utility repair functions are available without the hassle of starting from the DVD. It's terrific because it's so easy to use — any small problems don't snowball into bigger ones because of the DVD hassle and reluctance to use it. I run Applejack once a week.

Applejack can take care of permissions, but I skip that option because permissions take too long to run with Applejack. I use Disk Utility to fix any permissions problems, but not the version on the DVD. The version of Disk Utility in the Utilities folder fixes permissions and takes only a few seconds. I run all the other Applejack options. Applejack can do it all automatically, but whether running permissions automatically or manually, Applejack's permissions fix is like watching paint dry, so I run Applejack manually and skip its permissions fix.

If you try Applejack, save its Read Me file to the computer, since after the program loads it can't be seen.

Now however I was wondering if it would make a difference if I went through all my files and removed the things I really wouldn't need, such as .pdf's in French, German, and Spanish.

Monolingual is a free program that removes any foreign languages you do not need. If, for instance, you use only English, you can delete the myriad of languages taking up disk space, including Japanese and Chinese. But if you use Monolingual, make sure you leave all the versions of English alone. All the versions, whatever they are, such as British English and Canadian English — if Canadian English is on the list). And if, for example, you want French, leave all the various versions of French alone. Double- and triple-check the list of languages and their check marks.

The last time I loaded Tiger, I set it to load only English, but Monolingual still cleared 345 megabytes of space taken up with other languages. Tiger's "easy install" would have taken up much more space with foreign languages.

These programs and more are available at versiontracker.com and macupdate.com.

Edit: Applejack may not yet run in Intel Macs. Check out Onyx, which does.

[MrJuggles]

Hi, MrJuggles...
Monolingual is a free program that removes any foreign languages you do not need. If, for instance, you use only English, you can delete the myriad of languages taking up disk space, including Japanese and Chinese. But if you use Monolingual, make sure you leave all the versions of English alone. All the versions, whatever they are, such as British English and Canadian English — if Canadian English is on the list). And if, for example, you want French, leave all the various versions of French alone. Double- and triple-check the list of languages and their check marks.

2.5G.......
2.5G removed. You know, I'm just waiting for the bubble to burst here, that is so cool. Thanks for that Brown

[digital john]

check www.opensourcemac.org for the ftp program.

as for the maintenance, leave your mac turned on so the maintenance scripts can run at night.

Do you mind explaining how these work? This is the first time I have heard about them...

[rogueToe]

These scripts are built in to the Unix foundation of OS X, and are set to automatically run at night. If you don't want to leave your computer on all night, you can get a program like MacJanitor to do it when you want.

[claudius753]

Alternatively, you can go geek and run the cron scripts from Terminal :spook:

Logged in as a user with administrator rights (if you only have 1 account on your mac, this account has administrative rights), open the terminal.

At the command prompt type :

Periodic Daily Weekly Monthly

It will then run through the scripts, brining you back to the prompt when it is done, it probably won't say anything while its working.

[Kar98]

Do those clean-up and maintenance scripts run with the mini set to go to sleep after 2 hours of inactivity?

[Brown Study]

Do those clean-up and maintenance scripts run with the mini set to go to sleep after 2 hours of inactivity?

Crons won't run if the computer is sleeping.

One of the ways that Unix achieves its vaunted reliability is by way of a scheduling tool called cron, which runs scripts that clean up the mess left by normal operating system usage. Mac OS X is no different than other forms of Unix in this respect, and it has daily, weekly, and monthly scripts that reset log files, back up internal databases, and perform other necessary tasks, often between 3 AM and 5 AM. However, typical usage of Mac OS X differs from other Unix systems in that Macs are often turned off or sleeping when they're not being used, whereas other Unix machines tend to run constantly.

[hollerz.mac]

Monolingual is a free program that removes any foreign languages you do not need. If, for instance, you use only English, you can delete the myriad of languages taking up disk space, including Japanese and Chinese. But if you use Monolingual, make sure you leave all the versions of English alone. All the versions, whatever they are, such as British English and Canadian English — if Canadian English is on the list). And if, for example, you want French, leave all the various versions of French alone. Double- and triple-check the list of languages and their check marks.

Cool app!! Just deleted 2.7GB!! of languages! Thanks! D:

[Kar98]

Crons won't run if the computer is sleeping.

Good to know. Thanks. *goes and turns that option off*

[bfowler]

monolingual just gave me 2.3G back. amazing. thankyou much brown