Found the Monster that ate my Hard Drive and kept my machine awake . . . .

Question

. . . and got a two day education of TimeMachine that I until about an hour ago, I thought was the most worthless piece of software in the world. But then Apple has never been known for comprehensive operational instructions. I stumbled on a great very short thread that explained in several very easy steps how to completely restore from a TM Backup. And it worked like a charm. Needless to say, if I had stuck with CarbonCopy, I would have been done a couple of days ago, but now I know more of and love TM.
Anyway. . . .
After moving into an install of 10.5.2, because 10.4.11 would lock up if left idle for more than a minute or so. Apple you got your wish . . . I migrated. Once in 10.5.2 I slowly and methodically moved one application at a time as I needed them, doing all the now being assailed permissions and whatnot rituals, and giving them plenty of time to mutate. No problems. I was able to move many apps in, I link all my databases to a secure protected and severely anally backed up partition, and all was great. Then I started having Sleep problems. Time to hit the Apple Discussion Groups where I found several threads with the proverbial and over stated permission ritual that did nothing to help anyone there. Then I found one were someone asked about HP Printer software. I thought that the HP Printer software and OSX problems had been fixed, since Apple is offering HP updates in Software Update, HP has been right there with updates, and there is a Rep roaming these discussions offering help and update info. Too bad Lexmark doesn't care enough to even get their updates out within a year or two of OS updates. Anyway . . . . I have the latest, just released version of the AiO for the PS3310 and just the other day installed the HP Driver Update 1.0 that was offered by Apple Update. I uninstalled the AiO software and got sleep back, noticed that the 9+GB of space that was "missing" on the boot partition was back and that things ran smoother. Three birds with one stone. WooooHoooooo! BUT . . . .
I didn't leave it there cuz I kinda need the software to use the printer/scanner. So I installed and uninstalled five of the latest versions and got the same results each time. HP loaded, no sleep. Not loaded, sleep. Then my next thought was maybe it wasn't AiO software, but the recent HP 1.0 update. I haven't done my ritualistic CCC backups since using TimeMachine. So I looked and had a backup two days before I installed the HP 1.0 update and thought I would restore to that to see if the stand alone AiO would work. This is where my "trial by Apple" education of TM and the extra several days that it should have not taken come into play. Finally got to the install i wanted, installed AiO without the HP 1.0 Update and got the same results. +*So the Sleep Problem is the HP All-in-One Printer software, and not the AiO with the 1.0 Update.*+
So I have sleep back, but can not use our HP3310. AND now know most of the ins and outs of TimeMachine of which I now thin is pretty cool and will go in search of a User made Users Manual to see if there aren't anymore really cool features. Plus I have a couple questions of how it restores just to know of its process.
I hope this answers questions for those that I have seen scattered around the discussions.

Answer 1

well, I also have the same insomnia problem on my Mac Pro and I can now admit I had the same reservations as you so I made a little sleep program of my own.
Feel free to test it. It uses a very simple apple script and a launch daemon to run it. The script can be converted to a shell script if somebody wants to.
1. Copy and paste the following in Script Editor and save it as an application:
--read off the system sleep settings
set x to (do shell script "defaults read /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement \"Custom Profile\" | grep \"System Sleep Timer\" | awk '{print $5}' | sed -e 's/;//g'") as number
--convert to seconds
set sleep_timer to (x as number) * 60
--read off system idle time
set idle_time to (do shell script "ioreg -c IOHIDSystem | awk '/HIDIdleTime/ {print int($NF/1000000000); exit}'") as number
if idle_time > sleep_timer then
tell application "System Events" to sleep
end if
save it as an application somewhere everyone can read it (root level of your start up drive is a good place).
2. Install [lingon|http://lingon.sourceforge.net>.
3. start Lingon and create a new *Users agent*.
Set it to execute the app you saved in 1. every 60 seconds (that period can be adjusted).
4. restart.
That's it. The sleep settings are still set and changed in system preferences, so once installed you can forget about it.
One warning. As implemented, it will work so long as anybody is logged in. It won't work at the login window.
Message was edited by: V.K.