Anachron question

[rosalindavenue]

I have a new (three month old) g4 ibook that spends most of its time closed and isn't on at night. Thus it can't run the cleanup/ chron jobs that an "always on" mac would run. After reading another thread I downloaded anachron. After installation, my harddrive started chugging away; the processor heated up quite a bit; the fan came on, and an hour of battery life was consumed in 5 minutes. The screenshot below is of my console system log (redacted b/c my name is the ibook's name.) Fifteen minutes later, the fan is still on (although the temp is only 45C). Is everything OK, or should I not have done this?

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[~Shard~]

I am not familiar with this application, but will look into it. It's behavior definitely sounds abnormal though, so for now I would advise against running it again. A simple maintenance program should not be such a strain on your system.

Two things:

For starters, a lot of these scheduled tasks which only run at night have been rectiifed in Tiger. If you're running Panther, you still have to worry about these, but from what I've heard, Tiger has not inherited these UNIX traits. So, you don't have as much to worry about when it comes to maintenance like this. I still run 10.3.9, so I cannot speak from personal experience.

Secondly, regardless of the above, it is good to do regular maintenance to keep logs and databases in order. As I said, I am not sure exactly what this application does, but I would recommend an application like onyX or MacJanitor instead.MacJanitor, for instance, is free, and performs the tasks you appear to be trying to execute. Perhaps give that a try and see if your system responds in the same way.

 

[Graeme Pearce]

I have been using MacJanitor (also on an iBook G4, amongst others) for about a year. It runs these clean-up jobs in only a few minutes. No problems, ever.

Gp

 

[grapes911]

1. It's spelled cron and anacron.
2. Are you running tiger? If so, did you install anacron or anacron for Tiger. They are very different.
3. In Tiger, those maintenance scripts are now controlled by Launchd. Launchd will run those scripts later, if your computer is asleep. Anacron is only useful if you have cron scripts. Unless you wrote some yourself, you don't have any.

 

[~Shard~]

3. In Tiger, those maintenance scripts are now controlled by Launchd. Launchd will run those scripts later, if your computer is asleep. Anacron is only useful if you have cron scripts. Unless you wrote some yourself, you don't have any.

Thanks for clarifying this grapes911, I thought this was the case but wasn't positive.

 

[grapes911]

Thanks for clarifying this grapes911, I thought this was the case but wasn't positive.

No problem. BTW, do you have any plans to update to Tiger? It just seems that most people have. Not that 10.3.9 isn't a excellent OS.

 

[~Shard~]

No problem. BTW, do you have any plans to update to Tiger? It just seems that most people have. Not that 10.3.9 isn't a excellent OS.

I've just never had a big reason to. I like 10.3.9, it does everything I need, and I'm simply not in a rush to move to Tiger. I don't have a ton of files on my Mac, and for the files I do have, I keep them very neat and tidy, hence no big desire or need for Spotlight - I don't think I'd use it much. And the whole widget thing with Dashboard, well, I don't really see myself using it much either. I'm partly jaded though by Konfabulator, (which I realize isn't fair, but it's the way it is... ) as I used to run it, but found it to be too much of a RAM hog which caused more trouble than it's worth. I don't use RSS, I'm happy with Panther's Mail, what else... Yeah, no real desire to move. I think I'll just wait until I buy my new Mac in a couple years with Leopard pre-installed.

 

[rosalindavenue]

1. It's spelled cron and anacron.
2. Are you running tiger? If so, did you install anacron or anacron for Tiger. They are very different.
3. In Tiger, those maintenance scripts are now controlled by Launchd. Launchd will run those scripts later, if your computer is asleep. Anacron is only useful if you have cron scripts. Unless you wrote some yourself, you don't have any.

Thanks, grapes911 and Shard. I'm running 10.4; I did get the version for Tiger. I've been watching the console and I dont think it has run again. I had some concerns that my usage pattern (2-3 hours in the evenings, sleep, except for weekends, all day all night) was not allowing the unix overnight repairs to get done. Sorry for the spelling error (anacron)-- I'm usually among the first to jump on a badly spelled post. Here is the home page for anacron for 10.4. Thanks again for your help.

 

[grapes911]

Hope all turns out well, keep monitoring those logs, and keep us posted.

Sorry for the spelling error (anacron)-- I'm usually among the first to jump on a badly spelled post.

I didn't jump on you because of the misspelling. I did it because if someone had the same question and they searched for "anacron" your post wouldn't show up. I was merely looking out for future searchers.

 

[~Shard~]

Thanks, grapes911 and Shard. I'm running 10.4; I did get the version for Tiger. I've been watching the console and I dont think it has run again. I had some concerns that my usage pattern (2-3 hours in the evenings, sleep, except for weekends, all day all night) was not allowing the unix overnight repairs to get done. Sorry for the spelling error (anacron)-- I'm usually among the first to jump on a badly spelled post. Here is the home page for anacron for 10.4. Thanks again for your help.

No problem at all - as grapes911 said, keep us posted!