Just a few questions about maintenance on OS X.

First of all, can I confirm that most of the unix automatic scripts are now run by launchd and there is no longer a need to run them manually (or through Onyx)?

Also, to what degree does HFS+ takes care of fragmentation of files?

Lastly, what is the purpose of the caches folder? Is it recommended to delete it on a regular basis?

onyx is a wicked little piece of software. i fully recommend it.

i still recommend running diskwarrior on a regular basis, depending on usage.

Tiger is better than any variations to date but I'd confirm TWs assessment.

Apparantly, Onyx has security complications (it passes the admin password right under broad daylight!), so I would try to avoid it if possible.

As for diskwarrior, does it corrupt the filesystem?

Apparantly, one thing I noticed about POSIX systems is that most of them takes care of the file fragmentation on a filesystem level. I know this is true for ext3 on linux, but I am not sure how true it is for HFS+. Apparantly, while file fragmentation kills performance, volume fragmentation doesn't and is actually good to have to slow down file fragmentation.

So what kind of extra things does diskwarrior do?

ps. Can a mod move this thread the the general discussion section? Thanks a lot.

check out alsoft.com/diskwarrior.

What does Apple actually recommend as far as routine maintenance on Tiger is concerned?
Is repairing permissions not one basic maintenance task?
The other one would be to download OS software updates and patches.

I leave it at that plus regular backups. All five Macs in the family have run fine like that with various flavours of OS X.

Have never used Onyx - someone posted somewhere that Onyx just runs the same maintenance routines that the Mac runs automatically during the night. I leave my Mac on 24 hours a day, only the monitor and hard drive go to sleep, so I assume the Mac looks after itself whenit comes to routine maintenance.
As to disk warrior - great tool to fix hard drive problems, but is it really needed for maintenance???

1. launchd runs the scripts which used to be run by cron...but it still runs them at the same strange hours.

You can change the times to run them at a more decent hour by editing the .plist file for the scripts.

Find them here:
HD/System/Library/LaunchDaemons

The three scripts are :

com.apple.periodic-daily.plist
com.apple.periodic-monthly.plist
com.apple.periodic-weekly.plist

I loved DiskWarrior in OS 9, best there was for directory damage or serious disk issues.

Moved to X starting with the 'beta', then 10.0, then....to Tiger. For close to 4yrs without DW...just Apple's DiskUtility. All were upgrades, no clean installs or wiped drives. I was getting real nervous so a few month ago I decided to purchase DW again and ran the full gamut. Only 33% fragmentation after all that time...OS X rocks! YMMW, so make your own conclusion.

KRS you assume wrong. Drive asleep is no maintenenance. Tiger is much better at self maintenance but I suggest an Onyx run you might see what you are missing plus it has some nice speed tweaks.

Aside from backing up daily with SuperDuper, and Onyx ( or other similar ) cleanup one or twice a week makes a noticeable difference.

DiscWarrior rarely but it's invaluable if you get into serious drive issues.

Tigers is Utility is very good but there are still situations with MIA externals that DW saves the day.

KRS you assume wrong. Drive asleep is no maintenenance.

MacDoc - tell me more.

By 'Drive asleep' I mean the box in the energy saver prefernce panel is selected that says: "Put the hard disk to sleep when possible"
This is a default option preselected by Apple.

Are you telling me the built in maintenance routines in OS X that run during the night, won't run with this option selected?

Thanks, krs