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Apple Computing Products:
macOS - Apps and Programs
Questions about Main menu and its use
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<blockquote data-quote="MacHeadCase" data-source="post: 356768"><p>Well I can answer on some of the rebuilding/cleaning tasks as I had researched these a little while ago, it had gotten me curious what they really were all about. So here goes.</p><p></p><p>It is important to know that there are three types of maintenance tasks: daily, weekly and monthly tasks. Each task has a specific job to do to help keep your Mac healthy and purring like a kitten.</p><p></p><p>All these tasks run when the Mac is not in sleep mode or shut down every night between 3:00 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. or around that time. If it is in sleep mode or it is shut down, these do not run. In the long run, not running these self-maintenance tasks can mess up the system and your Mac will start behaving a bit wonky. </p><p></p><p>Add to that the fact that, while caches help your Mac run faster, sometimes these can become corrupt (why? I just dunno... *<em>scratches head</em>*) and a simple flushing of the caches will help give stability to your Mac once again. The cleaning out of caches can be performed with MainMenu, OnyX, <a href="http://www.northernsoftworks.com/tigercachecleaner.html" target="_blank"><strong>Tiger Cache Cleaner</strong></a> and a whole lot more utilities. </p><p></p><p>Here are a few definitions or explanations I found about certain terms we find in either MainMenu or OnyX in the cleaning and rebuilding tasks.</p><p></p><p>One of the cleaning/rebuilding tasks is about <a href="http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Carbon/Conceptual/LaunchServicesConcepts/LSCIntro/chapter_1_section_1.html" target="_blank"><strong>LaunchServices</strong></a>.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The way I easily understand this concept is that LaunchServices is what tells the system that with a certain file type, a specific application needs to be launched to open and read this file.</p><p></p><p>What is the Locate database? Well according to this <a href="http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2002/02/26/terminal_three.html?page=2" target="_blank"><strong>MacDevCenter article</strong></a>:</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Another rebuilding task mentioned is the <a href="http://www.rit.edu/~wwwits/services/desktop_support/mac/xrebuildwhatisdatabase.html]" target="_blank"><strong>WhatIs database</strong></a>:</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>On a more general note, I thought it would be ok to add some info on a few other things we mention a lot but might be a bit hard to know what it is or what it does exactly.</p><p></p><p>One thing that has always puzzled me was <a href="http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/apme/optimizations/#SIX" target="_blank"><strong>what is prebinding</strong></a>?</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>And what about permissions? Well permissions is a Unix thing and it is wonderfully explained in this OSXFAQ webpage, <a href="http://www.osxfaq.com/Tutorials/LearningCenter/AdvancedUnix/ugp/index.ws" target="_blank"><strong>Lesson 1 - Users, Groups, and Permissions</strong></a>. You will need to read the entire article as it is quite descriptive and well-written.</p><p></p><p>So what features I use in MainMenu? Since I don't leave my iMac on at night, I use the maintenance tasks commands every day. In fact, when I fire up the iMac, it's the first thing I do before opening Mail or Safari. </p><p></p><p>Sometimes when I get some quirky behaviour I will empty the various caches. I don't need to do it all that much but it has happened a couple of times since I've been using this iMac which is about 15 months. </p><p></p><p>So basically what I would suggest is this: run the daily tasks, once a week pick a day to run its daily task but also the weekly task and about every four weeks on the day of your choice, run the daily, weekly and monthly tasks. That should keep you safe. </p><p></p><p>Cache cleaning should only be done when the Mac is starting to behave erratically. Same thing for the rebuilding scripts. </p><p></p><p>Although it seemed that Mac OS X Tiger (10.4.x) has fixed the disk permissions problems Mac OS X Panther (10.3.x) had, I've seen a couple of threads in here lately wherer running <em>repair disk permissions</em> with the help of Apple's Disk Utility has fixed some problems so I guess it isn't completely fixed after all. So that could still be another weapon in your arsenal against Mac problems.</p><p></p><p>So I hope this helps you a bit. :girl:</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="MacHeadCase, post: 356768"] Well I can answer on some of the rebuilding/cleaning tasks as I had researched these a little while ago, it had gotten me curious what they really were all about. So here goes. It is important to know that there are three types of maintenance tasks: daily, weekly and monthly tasks. Each task has a specific job to do to help keep your Mac healthy and purring like a kitten. All these tasks run when the Mac is not in sleep mode or shut down every night between 3:00 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. or around that time. If it is in sleep mode or it is shut down, these do not run. In the long run, not running these self-maintenance tasks can mess up the system and your Mac will start behaving a bit wonky. Add to that the fact that, while caches help your Mac run faster, sometimes these can become corrupt (why? I just dunno... *[I]scratches head[/I]*) and a simple flushing of the caches will help give stability to your Mac once again. The cleaning out of caches can be performed with MainMenu, OnyX, [URL="http://www.northernsoftworks.com/tigercachecleaner.html"][B]Tiger Cache Cleaner[/B][/URL] and a whole lot more utilities. Here are a few definitions or explanations I found about certain terms we find in either MainMenu or OnyX in the cleaning and rebuilding tasks. One of the cleaning/rebuilding tasks is about [URL=http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Carbon/Conceptual/LaunchServicesConcepts/LSCIntro/chapter_1_section_1.html][B]LaunchServices[/B][/URL]. The way I easily understand this concept is that LaunchServices is what tells the system that with a certain file type, a specific application needs to be launched to open and read this file. What is the Locate database? Well according to this [URL=http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2002/02/26/terminal_three.html?page=2][B]MacDevCenter article[/B][/URL]: Another rebuilding task mentioned is the [URL="http://www.rit.edu/~wwwits/services/desktop_support/mac/xrebuildwhatisdatabase.html]"][B]WhatIs database[/B][/URL]: On a more general note, I thought it would be ok to add some info on a few other things we mention a lot but might be a bit hard to know what it is or what it does exactly. One thing that has always puzzled me was [URL=http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/apme/optimizations/#SIX][B]what is prebinding[/B][/URL]? And what about permissions? Well permissions is a Unix thing and it is wonderfully explained in this OSXFAQ webpage, [URL=http://www.osxfaq.com/Tutorials/LearningCenter/AdvancedUnix/ugp/index.ws][B]Lesson 1 - Users, Groups, and Permissions[/B][/URL]. You will need to read the entire article as it is quite descriptive and well-written. So what features I use in MainMenu? Since I don't leave my iMac on at night, I use the maintenance tasks commands every day. In fact, when I fire up the iMac, it's the first thing I do before opening Mail or Safari. Sometimes when I get some quirky behaviour I will empty the various caches. I don't need to do it all that much but it has happened a couple of times since I've been using this iMac which is about 15 months. So basically what I would suggest is this: run the daily tasks, once a week pick a day to run its daily task but also the weekly task and about every four weeks on the day of your choice, run the daily, weekly and monthly tasks. That should keep you safe. Cache cleaning should only be done when the Mac is starting to behave erratically. Same thing for the rebuilding scripts. Although it seemed that Mac OS X Tiger (10.4.x) has fixed the disk permissions problems Mac OS X Panther (10.3.x) had, I've seen a couple of threads in here lately wherer running [I]repair disk permissions[/I] with the help of Apple's Disk Utility has fixed some problems so I guess it isn't completely fixed after all. So that could still be another weapon in your arsenal against Mac problems. So I hope this helps you a bit. :girl: [/QUOTE]
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