How to quit EVERYTHING

[wordmunger]

I have a certain game I like to play in classic mode on my Ti400 (with Panther/640 MB), and it works fine as long as NOTHING is running at the same time. I even turn Airport off when I run it. However, sometimes it's sluggish even when I do all this. Then what I need to do is log out and log back in, starting from a "clean slate" so to speak. After I do that, it runs fine.

I know that Panther runs a lot of processes in the background, and I'm wondering if this is the problem. Is there an applescript (or a set of terminal commands) that I could use to make sure everything is shut down, so I don't have to log out every time I want to play my favorite game?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Horrortaxi]

Who not restart in OS 9?

 

[wordmunger]

Who not restart in OS 9?

Well, I can run the game fine in Classic mode, so I'd rather not resort to using OS 9. What I'm trying to figure out is how to run it without logging out or restarting. It's a little lame to have to do this every time I want to play.

 

[Horrortaxi]

If it's sluggish then it's not running fine. If you have to kill all unnecessary processes to run it then it's not fine. It might just be easier and faster to restart in 9.

To see all of your processes, go to applications -> utilities and launch Activity Monitor. That will list all of your processes and allow you to kill them. Restarting them after your game is a different matter.

 

[wordmunger]

If it's sluggish then it's not running fine. If you have to kill all unnecessary processes to run it then it's not fine. It might just be easier and faster to restart in 9.

To see all of your processes, go to applications -> utilities and launch Activity Monitor. That will list all of your processes and allow you to kill them. Restarting them after your game is a different matter.

Thanks for the help. I do appreciate it, but it's not faster to restart in 9. The main reason is that after I quit the game, I have to restart Panther. If I just log out and log back in again, it's just as fast, but then I don't have to restart Panther later.

Using Activity Monitor is not faster either--there are too many processes, and quitting them one at a time takes a while (not to mention the fact that I have no idea which processes are "safe" to quit). What I'm looking for is a way to automate what you've described doing in Activity Monitor. I think logging out and logging back in is effectively "automating" this task, but I was hoping for a more elegant method--sorry if I wasn't clear about that from the beginning.

Now if Apple would just hurry up and come out with the PB G5, I wouldn't have to mess with all this

 

[Horrortaxi]

You ought to be able to write an AppleScript to kill/start those processes.

 

[wordmunger]

You ought to be able to write an AppleScript to kill/start those processes.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking I would need to do. But how would I go about determining which processes were absolutely necessary? I suppose I could compare the Activity Monitor during a long session using MS word, Dreamweaver, etc. to what it looks like just after a login. But how would you write a script that essentially says "stop all processes except X, Y, and Z"?

 

[cubist]

... "stop all processes except X, Y, and Z"?

Maybe you could open Terminal, find the classic session process, and nice -1 it.

 

[Rincewind42]

You shouldn't need to quit any application that is not a GUI app unless it is explicitly using CPU time, which for the most part is not the case. If you do need to quit all those non-GUI background apps then only quit those that belong to you (i.e. don't kill root processes). Just out of curiosity, what game is this anyway?

 

[Fukui]

Thanks for the help. I do appreciate it, but it's not faster to restart in 9. The main reason is that after I quit the game, I have to restart Panther. If I just log out and log back in again, it's just as fast, but then I don't have to restart Panther later.

Using Activity Monitor is not faster either--there are too many processes, and quitting them one at a time takes a while (not to mention the fact that I have no idea which processes are "safe" to quit). What I'm looking for is a way to automate what you've described doing in Activity Monitor. I think logging out and logging back in is effectively "automating" this task, but I was hoping for a more elegant method--sorry if I wasn't clear about that from the beginning.

Now if Apple would just hurry up and come out with the PB G5, I wouldn't have to mess with all this

Get tinker tool and add the finder "Quit" menu. Its maybe doing some iDisk syncing (if you use iDisk) or something else. Otherwise in process viewer you can choose to just view processes under you name. You can kill anything under your name except loginwindow and maybe systemUIserver.

 

[wordmunger]

You shouldn't need to quit any application that is not a GUI app unless it is explicitly using CPU time, which for the most part is not the case. If you do need to quit all those non-GUI background apps then only quit those that belong to you (i.e. don't kill root processes). Just out of curiosity, what game is this anyway?

See, I think CPU time isn't the issue--I think it's memory. I think what is happening is that the game (MS Links CE) will access the hard drive to use virtual memory at inconvenient times (like in the middle of a backswing) causing me to mess up. So what I need to do is free up as much real memory as possible. So I really need to kill all processes, not just ones using the CPU.

On the other hand, Fukui could be right--it might be that iDisk syncing or iCal alarm monitoring is the problem. In which case, maybe just killing Mirror Agent will solve the problem. I'll give that a shot.

 

[Rincewind42]

See, I think CPU time isn't the issue--I think it's memory. I think what is happening is that the game (MS Links CE) will access the hard drive to use virtual memory at inconvenient times (like in the middle of a backswing) causing me to mess up. So what I need to do is free up as much real memory as possible. So I really need to kill all processes, not just ones using the CPU.

Well, then again Activity Monitor is your friend. You can see the amount of active/inactive/free memory for yourself and determine if this is the issue (and Links is paging often) or if it is something else. You can watch this under the System Memory tab.

It could also be that it is accessing the hard drive to do other things and this is unavoidable.

On the other hand, Fukui could be right--it might be that iDisk syncing or iCal alarm monitoring is the problem. In which case, maybe just killing Mirror Agent will solve the problem. I'll give that a shot.

Or you could turn off iDisk syncing . After all, Mirror Agent might be in the middle of something when you decide to kill it, just turning off local iDisk would probably be a better idea.

 

[wordmunger]

Or you could turn off iDisk syncing . After all, Mirror Agent might be in the middle of something when you decide to kill it, just turning off local iDisk would probably be a better idea.

Well, I just tried quitting Mirror Agent and the game worked flawlessly, so that might be the source of my problem. As long as I quit, rather than kill, I think I should be okay, right?

iDisk syncing is more important to me than saving 30 seconds when I play the game, so I don't think I'll turn that off

Also, any time you turn iDisk syncing back on, it has to completely rebuild the local idisk, which takes *forever*, so I like to just leave it on all the time.

I'm working on an Applescript to turn off Airport, quit Mirror Agent, and run the game. Unfortunately none of these things are recordable, so it may take me a while--most of my scripting experience is with Word and Excel macros, not Applescript.

 

[Rincewind42]

I'm working on an Applescript to turn off Airport, quit Mirror Agent, and run the game. Unfortunately none of these things are recordable, so it may take me a while--most of my scripting experience is with Word and Excel macros, not Applescript.

I'm not certain how you would turn off Airport, but this will do the rest.

--- begin ---
tell application "Mirror Agent" to quit
tell application "MS Links CE" to open
--- end ---

 

[wordmunger]

I'm not certain how you would turn off Airport, but this will do the rest.

--- begin ---
tell application "Mirror Agent" to quit
tell application "MS Links CE" to open
--- end ---

Hmmm...

Well the Mirror Agent part of that doesn't work for me--the computer can't find the application "Mirror Agent"

I'm now starting to think this isn't such a great idea anyway, because once I've turned off Mirror Agent, iDisk no longer is able to sync. "Duh," you might say, "wasn't that the point?" Well, it was, but really what I want to do is temporarily disable it while I run the game. To get it going again, I have to log out and log back in, which is what I was trying to avoid in the first place.

 

[Fukui]

Hmmm...

Well the Mirror Agent part of that doesn't work for me--the computer can't find the application "Mirror Agent"

I'm now starting to think this isn't such a great idea anyway, because once I've turned off Mirror Agent, iDisk no longer is able to sync. "Duh," you might say, "wasn't that the point?" Well, it was, but really what I want to do is temporarily disable it while I run the game. To get it going again, I have to log out and log back in, which is what I was trying to avoid in the first place.

Set iDisk syncing to manual instead of automatic. Mirror Agent only comes on if you click the sync button in the sidebar in that mode. You can also cancel syncing in that way.

 

[wordmunger]

Set iDisk syncing to manual instead of automatic. Mirror Agent only comes on if you click the sync button in the sidebar in that mode. You can also cancel syncing in that way.

Yeah, it's a real trade-off. I like the automatic syncing because then I don't have to think about backing up--it just happens. I have some very important documents (a book I'm writing) and I don't want to do anything that decreases the chance that I'll back up. But automatic syncing causes quite a few problems--this is just one of them. Mirror Agent often interferes with logout/shut down procedures, and sometimes when auto sync is enabled it won't let you manually override.

In the end, I just think my backups are too important to me, and I know myself well enough to know that I wouldn't manually back up as much as I should if I turned auto-sync off. If that's the case, I should probably just be willing to put up with its flaws, shouldn't I? Sigh. Such is life.

 

[Fukui]

Yeah, it's a real trade-off. I like the automatic syncing because then I don't have to think about backing up--it just happens. I have some very important documents (a book I'm writing) and I don't want to do anything that decreases the chance that I'll back up. But automatic syncing causes quite a few problems--this is just one of them. Mirror Agent often interferes with logout/shut down procedures, and sometimes when auto sync is enabled it won't let you manually override.

In the end, I just think my backups are too important to me, and I know myself well enough to know that I wouldn't manually back up as much as I should if I turned auto-sync off. If that's the case, I should probably just be willing to put up with its flaws, shouldn't I? Sigh. Such is life.

Well, for some reason, when my iDisk is syncing, I can click the spinning arrows in the side bar and cancel the sync...I dont know if every system is like that but I was surprised a little. It takes a minute or two though to cancel...might want to check it...

 

[Sun Baked]

OS 9 allows you direct access to hardware, so stuff will run much faster.

Under Classic you're running stuff through the OS -- you don't have direct hardware access.

In OS X you might lose 20% on benchmarks between OS 9 and Carbon Apps -- SMP, multithreading, etc. that the OS is handling. And all the little Apps you may have running may suck you down a bit more.