Maintenance scripts never run?/using terminal

Hi everyone! I am a very new Mac user and am finding at times it to be completely daunting.
So my question/problem is this: I shut down my computer nightly, and from what I have researched, it does not perform maintenance. I did a Terminal command to find when my script last ran and received this:
ls: /var/log/*.out: No such file or directory
Does this mean the scripts have never run? Can I change the default times these are executed?
I also went into the launchdaemons folder and it is empty. Does that mean anything?
I could really used a dumb down version of any answers, I have never used a Mac before I bought one, and actually just learned of the Terminal program today. I have been to The X Lab and read through that site, and searched the forum here.
Sorry for all the questions, I am so confused and terrified of damaging this computer.
Thank you in advance!

Welcome To  Discussions irach!
Here is some additional info.
As Kappy posted, if you turn the Mac off nightly, the Background Maintenance Tasks, are never run.
These can also be run, using a Third-Party utility, or manually using Terminal, to run the CRON Commands.
I use MacJanitor, when necessary.
INSTRUCTIONS TO RUN CRON MANUAL COMMANDS
Quit all applications/programs.
Navigate to HD > Applications > Utilities.
Double click on Terminal, to open.
At the prompt, type:
sudo periodic daily
Press Return.
Enter your Admin password when prompted, then press Return.
This will execute the daily script that is sheduled to run every night.
When completed, repeat this procedure, but change the command to:
sudo periodic weekly
This one rebuilds a database or two, and usually takes somewhat longer to complete. It is scheduled to run once a week.
Repeat again, with command:
sudo periodic monthly
Or they can all be run in one pass, which is preferable, with this command:
sudo periodic daily weekly monthly
When the tasks complete, and return to the prompt, you may quit Terminal.
Restart the Mac, and run Repair Permissions.
TO REPAIR PERMISSIONS ON THE STARTUP DISK
1.Open Disk Utility, located in Applications/Utilities, and select the startup disk in the left column.
2.Click First Aid.
3.Click Verify Disk Permissions to test permissions or Repair Disk Permissions to test and repair permissions. (I never "Verify". Just run "Repair".)
Rerun RP, until the only messages reported, are listed here Spurious Permissions Errors Using: 10.4.x, authored by Michael Conniff.
When "Repair Permissions" is complete. Quit "Disk Utility".
ali b

Similar Messages

Maintenance Scripts not running

Purchased a mac mini a few days ago. Noticed in my system log: Recent contents: that it doesn't seem to be running the overnight maintenance. It reads:
Nov 20. 03: 15: 02 - geoff powells computer: mac - mini. cp: error processing extended attributes. Operation not permitted.
This is updated daily with the same result. Mini is left running 24/7.
Phoned Apple Tech Support who said their G4s syslogs said the same.
But couldn't say if the scripts were running or not.
Anyone any clues.
The sys log of my G5 running 10.3.8 shows a restart everyday.

Hi Geoff,
Welcome to Discussions!
Your system works perfectly well and the Periodic maintenance runs.
- That a system log starts precisely at 3:15 shows alone that your computer is left on all night and the Daily script runs at its default scheduled time.
--> Open Console again and see the three Periodic maintenance logs. They are daily.out, monthly.out and weekly.out.
If your computer never sleeps, you should find that they were run at 3:15am every day (daily task), 3:15am on Saturdays (weekly task), and 5:30am on the first day of each month (monthly task).
Note that since 10.4.2 they are able to run "delayed" in case your computer was sleeping during the night. This enhancement works perfectly well with the Daily Task, but not very reliably with the Weekly and the Monthly.
Still no running at all if computer shut down at night.
HTH
Axl

Running Periodic Maintenance Scripts in Mountain Lion

Here's an oldie question that I think has been asked with every new version of Mac OS X. If a user shuts down his Mac in the evening and restarts in at 7AM the next morning, do the three periodic maintenance scripts ever run in Mountain Lion?
It's easy to run them manually in Terminal or even with with an Applescript that I wrote, but do they need to be run under the condition I posed above?
Thanks.

For those people stating that no one needs to run these scripts or that they're somehow dangerous, please reconsider before posting inaccurate things like that.
I haven't seen anyone stating that the scripts are dangerous. Clearly, they aren't. They are, however, unnecessary if the system is rebooted every day. The only exception is the periodic daily script 100.clean-logs, which deletes symbolic links in /Library/Logs/CrashReporter to crash and panic reports in /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports older than 60 days. The reports themselves are deleted by a different process. Conceivably, if this script didn't run for a long enough time, the boot volume might fill up with broken symlinks to deleted crash reports. How long would that take?
Well, a symbolic link takes up 77 bytes of storage space. Storage devices, however, allocate space in minimum units of one sector, which is usually 512 bytes. Some of the newer 3 TB hard drives have a 4096-byte sector size. So let's make some worst-case assumptions. Your boot drive is 3 TB, and you have only 1% of that space free, which is 30 GB. You generate 100 crash reports a day -- those being only crashes of system processes, of course, not user processes, which are logged to a different place. So your volume is filling up with symbolic links at the rate of about 400 KB a day. At that rate, it would take only about 75 years to fill it up completely.
So you're quite correct. If your system is always shut down -- not in sleep -- between the hours of 3:15 and 5:30 AM every day, you should manually run 100.clean-logs at least once every 75 years. Let's say once every 25 years, to be on the safe side. Thanks for pointing that out.
Properly Maintain Macbook pro: Apple Support Communities

Reschedule maintenance scripts?

Is there a way to reschedule the maintenance scripts that run from 3:15 until 5:30?
I would like to run them earlier so that I can shut down the computer before I go to bed, since I don't want to leave the machine on all night. I know you can do them manually, but I don't want to have to do that every day.
Also, does anyone know if there would be some sort of problem if I rescheduled them? Can one continue working while they are running?
Thanks
eMac 1.25GHz, 512MB Mac OS X (10.3.5)

Sorry for the dead link. I guess O'Reilly has issues with a direct link. Here's another site that explains how to edit crontab-
Using the cron maintenance utility
Though written for 10.1 the instructions are the same. Your system crontab file will look different. Scripts are run by periodic in Panther instead of directly running a specific script. Try experimenting with pico if you haven't used a command line text editor before. The OS is full explanations try the following commands in the Terminal application-
man cron
man periodic
man periodic.conf
man pico
man 5 crontab
man crontab
Try NifflerX's suggestion if this seems to hard. Though using the Terminal way is good practice for changing system configuration files without the risk of gumming up your OS.

Cron, cronX and maintenance scripts

In my old iBook I used cronX (I think that's the name) to set the unix maintenance scripts to run when the computer is likely to be awake. I don't know that those things bought me anything, but can't hurt, right?
My problem - I'd like to get a current version for the new MacBook (wow! - way cool!) but neither Google nor VersionTracker have a listing for any version of cronX. I recall it came from somewhere in Europe so perhaps that's why? Also have heard of MacJanitor and maybe a couple of other apps that will do a similar function.
Can anyone point me to a source for cronX or similar?
Thanks!
MacBook 13" 2.0GHz Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Oops - got lucky searching for something else!
It's cronniX from http://h5197.serverkompetenz.net:9080/abstracture_public/projects-en/cronnix/
MacBook 13" 2.0GHz Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Periodic Maintenance Scripts

I read this thread http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=3136865&#3136865
but it is closed so I coldn't post an additional question.
In understand about how the 3 maintenance scripts are supposed to work (Thank you Dr. Smoke!), but for a variety of reasons I need to put my MacBook Pro to sleep at night. Last night, I set the Energy Saver options to wake up at 3:00 AM, having previously checked to see that the daily script was set to run at 3:15. The computer goes to sleep after one hour, so that should have given enough time for the script to run.
This morning the daily script had NOT run, and the Console log is filled with entried like this:
Mar 21 03:30:47 administrators-computer DirectoryService[49]: Active Directory DS Plugin: Kerberos Time Skew Too Large. Check Date/Time!\n
(There are no entries between 3:00 and 3:30). The computer was not connected to the network where the AD lives (that is at work). Also, this morning when I woke the computer up manually, the clock was set at 3:40.
I can continue to run the daily script by hand, but I would rather not. Any help will be appreciated.
Walt

Make your life simpler. There are some excellent alternatives that completely automate running the maintenance scripts for you. You'll find them at VersionTracker or MacUpdate.
Macaroni - Shareware $8.00
Anacron - Freeware
PseudoAnacron - Freeware
These utilities check if the periodic maintenance scripts were run at their scheduled times, and if not runs them immediately. They assure the scripts are run when your computer is turned on so you needn't worry about scheduling the computer to wake up at a certain time.
Why reward points?(Quoted from Discussions Terms of Use.)
The reward system helps to increase community participation. When a community member gives you (or another member) a reward for providing helpful advice or a solution to their question, your accumulated points will increase your status level within the community.
Members may reward you with 5 points if they deem that your reply is helpful and 10 points if you post a solution to their issue. Likewise, when you mark a reply as Helpful or Solved in your own created topic, you will be awarding the respondent with the same point values.

Maintenance scripts question

I was just wondering if the daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance scripts will run overnight if I have the 'puter set to sleep after an hour or so. In other words, will it wake itself to do maintenance? Thanks!

If you would like to forget about the problem then download and install either Macaroni or PseudoAnacron - VersionTracker or MacUpdate. They will automatically run the scripts whenever the computer becomes available if they did not run at their scheduled times.
Kappy's Personal Suggestions for OS X Maintenance
For disk repairs use Disk Utility. For situations DU cannot handle the best third-party utilities are: Disk Warrior; DW only fixes problems with the disk directory, but most disk problems are caused by directory corruption; Disk Warrior 4.0 is now Intel Mac compatible. TechTool Pro provides additional repair options including file repair and recovery, system diagnostics, and disk defragmentation. TechTool Pro 4.6.1 is Leopard compatible; Drive Genius is similar to TechTool Pro in terms of the various repair services provided. The current version, 1.5.1, is Intel Mac compatible.
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 such as Macaroni, JAW PseudoAnacron, or Anacron 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.
For emergency repairs install the freeware utility Applejack. If you cannot start up in OS X, you may be able to start in single-user mode from which you can run Applejack to do a whole set of repair and maintenance routines from the commandline. Note that presently AppleJack is not compatible with Leopard.
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 not significant):
1. Retrospect Desktop (Commercial - not yet universal binary)
2. Synchronize! Pro X (Commercial)
3. Synk (Backup, Standard, or Pro)
4. Deja Vu (Shareware)
5. PsynchX 2.1.1 and RsyncX 2.1 (Freeware)
6. Carbon Copy Cloner (Freeware - 3.0 is a Universal Binary)
7. SuperDuper! (Commercial)
8. Data Backup (Commercial)
The following utilities can also be used for backup, but cannot create bootable clones:
1. Backup (requires a .Mac account with Apple both to get the software and to use it.)
2. Toast
3. Impression
4. arRSync
Apple's Backup is a full backup tool capable of also backing up across multiple media such as CD/DVD. However, it cannot create bootable backups. It is primarily an "archiving" utility as are the other two.
Impression and Toast are disk image based backups, only. Particularly useful if you need to backup to CD/DVD across multiple media.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQs on maintenance, optimization, virus protection, and backup and restore.
Additional suggestions will be found in Mac Maintenance Quick Assist.
Referenced software can be found at www.versiontracker.com and www.macupdate.com.

Running Maintenance Scripts for Mac OS 10.5.8 HELP!

I am trying to run the maintenance scripts on my laptop for the first time. I go to Terminal type in "sudo periodic daily weekly monthly" and hit return. A warning message pops up the some data may be lost.... and the the Password prompt comes up. I back up consistently so I just want to run the scripts since it has never been done. However, when I try to type in my password, NOTHING types. I hit return and tried again, but nothing. Can someone please help me figure out what is wrong and if there is any other maintenance I need to do to the system?
Thanks in advance for any help.

You don't need to use any utility, or perform any procedure, to make sure OS X's built-in maintenance tasks have run under OS X 10.5 and later.
OS X 10.5 will run its cron jobs automatically (actually, they are no longer handled by the UNIX facility "cron", they are now handled by a similar facility called "launchd". if that means anything to you) whether you have left your computer on all night or not. You no longer need a utility to run missed maintenance as of OS X 10.5. It will run automatically at the next available opportunity. Actually, this was the case as of OS X 10.4, but a bug kept the maintenance routines from running more than once per restart under OS X 10.4. This was fixed in OS X 10.5
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=6552347
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars/5
http://developer.apple.com/macosx/launchd.html

How to create a one click apple script to run sudo rm -rf in terminal

Hey Everyone
I have sensitive information on my computer, quite paranoid and would love to have a one click script to run sudo rm -rf in terminal.
I'm quite new to scripts and all that, can someone please explain how to do this as a noob?
would love if I didn't need to enter the password to authorise the wipe.
also is there anything more effective as sudo rm -rf?
and can sudo rm -rf be undone? like can some traces be brought back from the drive if your like a super pro at hard drive data recovery?

Welcome to Apple Support Communities
That's not the way to delete everything from the hard drive, because your files can still be recoverable after running that command with special apps.
Instead, if you want to make sure that your data cannot be recovered, start up in OS X Recovery (hold Command and R keys while your Mac is starting up), open Disk Utility and erase your OS X partition by choosing one of the security options you can use to erase your files. See > http://pondini.org/OSX/DU2.html
A better option would be to put that sensitive data onto an encrypted external drive

When do the perodic maintenance scripts run?

In previous versions of OS X, we could see at what time the scripts were running by looking the files:
com.apple.periodic-daily.plist
com.apple.periodic-weekly.plist
com.apple.periodic-weekly.plist
In fact I had a script for that:
cd /System/Library/LaunchDaemons
PLISTBUDDY=/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy
$PLISTBUDDY -x -c "Print :StartCalendarInterval" com.apple.periodic-daily.plist
$PLISTBUDDY -x -c "Print :StartCalendarInterval" com.apple.periodic-weekly.plist
$PLISTBUDDY -x -c "Print :StartCalendarInterval" com.apple.periodic-weekly.plist
But is Mavericks, the content of these files have changed and the time is missing. Here is an example of the new files:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
          <key>AbandonProcessGroup</key>
          <true/>
          <key>Label</key>
          <string>com.apple.periodic-weekly</string>
          <key>LaunchEvents</key>
          <dict>
                    <key>com.apple.xpc.activity</key>
                    <dict>
                              <key>com.apple.periodic-weekly</key>
                              <dict>
                                        <key>AllowBattery</key>
                                        <false/>
                                        <key>GracePeriod</key>
                                        <integer>14400</integer>
                                        <key>Interval</key>
                                        <integer>604800</integer>
                                        <key>Priority</key>
                                        <string>Maintenance</string>
                                        <key>Repeating</key>
                                        <true/>
                              </dict>
                    </dict>
          </dict>
          <key>LowPriorityIO</key>
          <true/>
          <key>Nice</key>
          <integer>1</integer>
          <key>ProgramArguments</key>
          <array>
                    <string>/usr/libexec/periodic-wrapper</string>
                    <string>weekly</string>
          </array>
</dict>
</plist>
Does anybody know where we can set the times for these scripts? The purpose is to allow the iMacs to sleep at night.

DlacVal wrote:
Does anybody know where we can set the times for these scripts? The purpose is to allow the iMacs to sleep at night.
There is no need for that. Unlike traditional *NIX OS's that run these jobs using cron, OS X now uses launch daemons to run these (& many other) jobs. The benefit is a cron job won't run if the computer is asleep or powered down at the time set for a job, while ones started by launch daemons are queued up & run the next time the computer is awake.
For more about this, see page 12 of the Mavericks Core Technology Overview pdf. (Also maybe check out the Timer Coalescing discussion beginning on page 8.)
The battery, priority, & other key/value pairs in the plists insure that the maintenance tasks will run only when they have the least impact on performance & power consumption.
If you want to see when they have run you can use Console to look at the daily.out, weekly.out, & monthly.out logs (in the /var/log section). You should see that they do not run at fixed times, nor should they.

Run Maintenance Scripts

On my PM G5 in the past I have successfully run maintenance scripts as follows:
periodic daily weekly monthly
from the terminal window with no problems. Usually when the command line is
executed the sys asks for master password and when it is entered, the program runs
without further messages, only cursor displayed, until it finishes and returns
the command line prompt.
Now suddenly when the command is executed the sys returns:
208-106-62-250:~ richardrkelley$ periodic daily
/usr/sbin/periodic: line 1: /var/log/daily.out: Permission denied
/usr/sbin/periodic: line 106: 370 Broken pipe date
cat: /tmp/periodic.7sKejqD8Mz: Bad file descriptor
cat: /tmp/periodic.7sKejqD8Mz: Bad file descriptor
cat: /tmp/periodic.7sKejqD8Mz: Bad file descriptor
208-106-62-250:~ richardrkelley$
I have run the disk utility and repaired permissions and repaired the disk
with no change. There were some minor repairs done to permissions and disk.
I would appreciate advice as the how to fix this problem and to prevent
future occurrence of same.
Thanks all.

Oops; I had a senior moment.
The correct command to run maint scripts is:
sudo periodic ........
sorry for the dumb question.

Run bash script other than from terminal?

Hi,
I have a small 2 line script that runs an application...I want to create an icon to double-click to run the 2 lines and start the app, so I don't have to open Terminal and type the 2 lines.
I've used Automator to create an app to do this, but in the task bar I see "run shell script" and the rotating wheel-thingy the whole time the app is open.
Is there any way to create a script/app to do this without having "run shell script" and the rotating wheel-thingy going on?
Cheers,
Nige

Hmm, why does the word "Platypus" keep running through my head?
Bob, I'm trying to do the same thing (create a .app to launch a unix application) and I also ran into the aesthetic issue of the spinning gear in the menu bar for the entire time the app was running. Since the unix app I'm running is a Usenet news reader, that spinning gear would be a long-term distraction. I'll check out Platypus, but I and probably the others in this thread are trying to learn how to do this stuff ourselves to further our OS X knowledge, not merely to solve this one problem.
So with that being said, does anyone know if there's a way to create an Automator "Run Shell Script" action with that spinning gear in the menu bar suppressed? You know, besides using Platypus.

Does OS X automatically run the maintenance scripts?

Can someone tell me if OS X (10.6 or 10.7) automatically runs the Daily, Weekly and Monthly maintenance scripts when my computer is asleep? If not, does OS X cause these scripts to run at the next point when the computer awakes?

Yes, Apple fixed that issue that they would only run in the early AM when most users have their machines off/sleeping and clog the machine up.
No need to worry about having to do anything anymore unless you have a glitchy issue, then the free OnyX will clean your machine's caches out nicely.
http://www.titanium.free.fr/

Cannot run Disk Utility, use terminal, or boot from CD, all HDs locked

I have a Mac Pro with 4 internal drives and 3 of them suddenly locked themselves. I can't run Disk Utility -- I get "underlying task reported failure on exit."
I can't boot from Disk Warrior CD. I hold down the C key til the Apple logo appears, and then the computer just restarts into my regular system on my hard drive.
I can run some apps from my startup drive, (obviously I can get on the internet). I downloaded Drive Genius but it will not install.
I cannot use the terminal to try any of those fancy tricks I read about here.
Here's what I get when I try Terminal:
login: PAM Error (line 396): System error
login: Could not determine audit condition
[Process completed]
And after that, I cannot type in the Terminal window.
Man, this is crazy. 2 of my other internal drives have backup systems on them, but they will not show up as choices in the startup disk section of my system preferences - cuz they are locked.
Any suggestions? I'm about to install a new drive and try and clone my working system on it and put Disk Warrior on it.

DJWillis wrote:
Wait, can I use Terminal from another computer in target mode?
yes, but do you mean you can boot it in target mode but not from a DVD? this is very strange. try booting fro a DVD in a different way. reboot and hold "option" at the chime. this should boot you into startup disk manager. normally you can insert the DVd at the point and choose to boot from it.

Maintenance scripts

Hi everyone,
I have two questions that I need help with, both related to the running of maintenance scripts. I downloaded and installed "anacron" the other day. When I check terminal, I notice that the daily maintenance script runs between midnight and 1am each day. I'm pretty sure that the default time for Tiger is somewhere between 3 and 4 am, a time which is assumed to not have much user activity. If the maintenance scripts are now being run around midnight or 1am, times when I am likely to be using the computer, will I notice a system slowdown? I've heard that supplemental maintenance scripts programs, (like Onyx, anacron, macjanitor, etc) are not necessary.
I would uninstall the program, but I've tried searching for the files that the readme says to delete, and I am unable to find them (using the Finder and EasyFind). I am not sure if the program has now replaced Tiger maintenance, and if I delete anacron then the Tiger scripts won't run anymore. Can someone provide me with a way to safely uninstall the program and ensure that the scripts will still run? Thank you.

Hi Louis
I have been running Anacron for several years with no problems. You will not know when it is running most of the time unless you hear your hardrive clicking. Since my computer sleeps through the scheduled times it normally would run, it will run the scrips at times after the time period exceeds the time limit set since last run. Daily scripts every 24 hrs., etc. Anacron will check every hour to test the time limit to see if it needs to run and will run the scripts when needed. Therefore, if your computer was sleeping or off less than 24 hrs. of the time the daily script was set to run or since the last time it was run and you wake it or turn it on 3 days later, the daily script will run approximately 15 minutes past the next hour.
As I said, it has never given me a problem and you won't ever have to worry about the log files getting bloated.
These scripts don't really need to be run that often and some people prefer to use manuel programs such as ONYX to run them on occasion. That's probably more of a personal preference. I choose not to want to think about it and let Anacron do it's thing. If I ever think it may be causing problems, I won't hesitate to remove it. But so far on 3 computers, no problems.
But if you feel the need to uninstall it follow this:
To uninstall Anacron, go to Hard Drive/Library/LaunchDaemons/anacron.plist. Move the file "anacron.plist" to the desktop and restart the computer. Then you can trash anacron.plist file.
Or, search in the Finder or with spotlight for Anacron. You will see the "anacron.plist" file. Delete it and restart the computer. Then you will be able to empty the trash.
I can't really say how much this and permission repair has really helped, but I can tell you that for 3 years I have virtually no problems with my computers and have never had to reinstall the operating system on any of them other than updating or moving to the newer OSX.

Maintenance scripts never run?/using terminal

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for