Crash logs in console

Question

I was looking in console.log and under the crashreporters in the following logs, ~/library/logs,/library/logs and /var/logs, there are lists of crashes. 4 in ~/library/logs, 2 in /library/log and a long list in /var/logs crashreporter.log. Also, there is a panic.log for Netupdate in /library/log. I am a newbie to Mac OS X or any other computer for that matter. Can I repair them? How can I keep these or other crashes from happening in the future? Thanks.

Answer 1

First, repairing permissions has nothing whatsoever to do with crashes. Crash logs simply keep a record when something in a program doesn't work properly or when a program actually crashes. Sometimes these are just due to poorly written programs, sometimes the result of bad data input, sometimes an operator error, sometimes a system malfunction. The logs only record what has happened. There's not much you can do except to determine what actually crashed and then experimenting, if possible, to replicate the condition that caused the crash and then report it to the software's developer.
If you're not having problems otherwise don't worry about it. Certainly don't waste your time repairing permissions.
If a program is failing because of a disk-based corruption problem, then repairing the hard drive may help. However, that will not fix a problem if the problem is a corrupted file.
If you have a specific problem report what that problem is and provide whatever information is in the relevant crash report. Be sure the crash report date and time coincides with when the problem occurred. It's possible you are looking at crash reports that may have occurred quite some time ago.
You might consider undertaking a regular program of system maintenance to help prevent problems from occurring. My recommendations are:
OS X performs certain maintenance functions that are scheduled to occur on a daily, weekly, or monthly period. The maintenance scripts run in the early AM only if the computer is turned on 24/7 (no sleep.) If this isn't the case, then an excellent solution is to download and install a shareware utility called Macaroni that will automate the maintenance activity regardless of whether the computer is turned off or asleep.
OS X automatically defrags files less than 20 MBs in size, so unless you have a disk full of very large files there's little need for defragmenting the hard drive. As for virus protection there are few if any such animals affecting OS X. You can protect the computer easily using the freeware Open Source virus protection software ClamXAV. Personally I would avoid most commercial anti-virus software because of their potential for causing problems.
I would also recommend downloading the shareware utility TinkerTool System that you can use for periodic maintenance such as removing old logfiles and archives, clearing caches, etc.
When you install any new system software or updates be sure to repair the hard drive and permissions beforehand. I also recommend booting into safe mode before doing system software updates.
Get an external Firewire drive at least equal in size to the internal hard drive and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (order is significant):
1. Retrospect Desktop (Commercial - not yet universal binary)
2. Synchronize! Pro X (Commercial)
3. Deja Vu (Shareware)
4. SuperDuper (Commercial)
5. Carbon Copy Cloner (Freeware - not universal binary.)
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQs on maintenance, optimization, virus protection, and backup and restore.