What do you use?

[Joseph]

I personally use Onyx every now and then to clean up my Mac. What do you guys use? Maybe I'll try something new.

[mad0214]

Was testing out both Main Meu and onyX for a while, but I really don't need another toolbar button. That wasn't the only reason, but as you can tell, I settled on OnyX. Anyone use Cocktail?

[macnatic]

strictly onyx

[Justin Laramee]

OnyX (big clean up) and MainMenu (remove .DS_Store, Force empty trash). If i need to do more "geek" commands, I use Clix.

[John]

Main Menu here for casual maintenance. I have Yasu as well.

When everything goes totally titsup, an absolute must-have is AppleJack (http://applejack.sourceforge.net/).

AppleJack was the only thing, for example, that sorted out my FireWire Lacie drive today, which was stubbornly refusing to mount and was taking all my FireWire ports out with it.

Shut down, restart holding Apple+S, type applejack auto restart at the prompt and go have a cup of tea. All sorted.

John

[wpholmes]

YASU

I love it.

[thewrinklyninja]

when I first got my Mac I just used the Maintenance apple script from the Apple main site, but then switched to Onyx. Although every now and again I keep thinking of giving Cocktail a try.

[Jim]

I currently use Onyx and MainMenu on my iMac. A few years back when I still had my iBook, I swore by Cocktail.

[MikeFerri]

Hey, can someone explain to me how AppleJack works?

I downloaded it but I cant open it?

[Alex]

applejack is a command line utility, so you will have to use Terminal to run it. (look in the documentation)

[Paul DeBoer]

I use Maintenance - not the popular automator actions pack, it's the one from the maker of Onyx. The only difference between it and Onyx is that it doesn't have options to alter the OS look/feel - it's strictly for...well...uhh...Maintenance. It's smaller (not that Onyx is HUGE or anything).

[MikeFerri]

applejack is a command line utility, so you will have to use Terminal to run it. (look in the documentation)

My bad... It was just a mouse problem lol


Thanks though.

[John]

Not quite - AppleJack is meant to be run before the OS boots. Once installed, you have to reboot into the Single User, command line environment, (hold down Apple-S as your computer boots) and then the AppleJack instructions come up with the command prompt. Welcome to UNIX!

It sounds a bit scary but it's not really.

The easiest is to type "applejack auto restart" which will run through all the routines and restart automatically. Otherwise just type "applejack" and run through them all manually (which allows you to clean your user caches and prefs).

I can 100% confirm that AppleJack has fixed many issues I have had that running such commands inside the running OS has failed to address.

Please note that AppleJack is really for fixing actual issues rather than for casual maintenance...

[Jim]

AppleJack got me out of many sticky situations with my iBook.

I had all but forgotten it existed. Thanks for reminding me. :)

[Kyle Nilson]

I'm a fan of Terminal.

Just run the following commands:

sudo /etc/daily
sudo /etc/weekly
sudo /etc/monthly

[MikeFerri]

Not quite - AppleJack is meant to be run before the OS boots. Once installed, you have to reboot into the Single User, command line environment, (hold down Apple-S as your computer boots) and then the AppleJack instructions come up with the command prompt. Welcome to UNIX!

It sounds a bit scary but it's not really.

The easiest is to type "applejack auto restart" which will run through all the routines and restart automatically. Otherwise just type "applejack" and run through them all manually (which allows you to clean your user caches and prefs).

I can 100% confirm that AppleJack has fixed many issues I have had that running such commands inside the running OS has failed to address.

Please note that AppleJack is really for fixing actual issues rather than for casual maintenance...

So just to clarify, once its installed I should be able to boot up in single user mode and have it work without doing anything else?

Also, assuming thi is all correct, it wouldn't harm anything to try it once just to get familiar with it, right? I like to know what Im doing first instead of having my computer crash and not knowing what to expect.

[John]

It's not totally automatic - you will have to input the applejack command(s) at the command prompt.

After you boot into single user you will see the AppleJack help come up, which will tell you all you need to know, and if you need more detail you can go into the man pages.

By all means test it! It is perfectly safe to do so.

You can either issue the command "applejack" at the prompt, which will give you the 5 item maintenance menu, and run through each in turn manually, which will give you the option of cleaning the user caches and prefs also. For safety it insists you type your path directly, ie /Users/Yourname. It will offer paths for all the users on the machine so you do not have to memorise them!!

Or you can simply do "applejack auto restart" which will run through all the items automatically (although it only cleans systems caches and prefs) and then reboot the machine.

There are other options that I have never felt the need for, such as a deep clean.

By memory, the routines are as follows:

1. Verifies disks. It will warn you of errors and offer to fix if possible.
2. Verify and repair permissions.
3. Verify preference files.
4. Clean caches (you'll be surprised how much data some apps cache).
5. Clean out var/swap files, sleep image etc

The first restart will probably take a little longer than usual, which is fine.

An indispensable troubleshooting tool. I keep reminding myself to donate.

[Jack Cory]

onyx is the way i go

[MikeFerri]

John:

Thanks alot. I just went through it. I had no idea what I was doing it, but it was fun to go through none the less.

Is it my imagination that my computers running faster now?

[mad0214]

I use onyx and have applejack as well. I used applejack to fix a disc problem when I couldn't fix it with dic utility. It's been great to have and I'm glad Merlin talked about it on MBW.

[John]

John:

Thanks alot. I just went through it. I had no idea what I was doing it, but it was fun to go through none the less.

Is it my imagination that my computers running faster now?

:thumbup: Great...

You machine might well be running a little faster. Cleaning out old cache and log files can sometimes have a dramatic effect. Repairing permissions, although not voodoo like some people say, can also improve things.

You don't want to do it too often though, it's not really for routine maintenance. Just running the regular maintenance scripts from terminal will generally keep your Mac in tip-top shape.

[MikeFerri]

Ill likely forget about it until someday I randomly browse my applications folder.

[MikeFerri]

Hey I have a question.. I was running Apple Jack on my sisters computer and it said it could repair the disk because the disk was "unhealthy"... what could/does this this mean, how can I fix it.

Also off topic... I tried doing an archive and install from her eMac (10.3.9) to Tiger (10.4.9) and it wouldnt work. I kept getting the Kernel screen of death.

Any got any ideas on either of these issues... or maybe they're related. Who knows.

[v00]

I use Cocktail for all my caches, etc. Drive Genius for repairing disks. And Tech Tools Deluxe for system diagnostics.