Here are some detailed instructions on how to use the maintenance tips that were described by François Joseph de Kermadec from an article he wrote for the O'Reilly Macintosh Development Center. The URL for the original article is: http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003/11/21/maintenance.html.

Contents

• Repairing Privileges
• Repairing the Disk
• Forcing Periodic Maintenance
• Updating the Prebinding
• Maintenance Schedule

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Repairing Privileges

1. Open the . It is located in the /Applications/Utilities folder. It will look something like this:
   
2. Select your boot drive on the left side of the window, then click Repair Disk Permissions:
3. Just let it run. You can do this while working on other things.

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Repairing the Disk

1. Boot from the Mac OS X Install CD 1.
2. From the Installer menu select Open Disk Utility.
3. Select your hard drive on the left side of the window and click Repair Disk.
4. Once this has finished, you can quit from the Disk Utility program and reboot your computer. You may need to go back to the Installer menu and select Change Startup Disk so that you will reboot from your hard drive instead of from the installer CD.

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Forcing Periodic Maintenance

1. Open the application. It is located in the /Applications/Utilities folder. It will look something like this:
   
2. There are three different periodic tasks that will run automatically if you leave your computer on all the time. If you don't, then you can run them in the terminal:
   sudo periodic daily
   sudo periodic weekly
   sudo periodic monthly
   Here is an example of running the daily task:
   
   Note that the system asked for a password. When it does, you will want to enter your login password (or just hit return if you have an empty password). That is because the sudo command runs whatever follows it as super-user. If you are running all three tasks in a row, the system will probably only ask you to enter your password after the first command.

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Updating the Prebinding

• For this maintenance task you will want to also use the Terminal program, just as for doing periodic maintenance.
• After opening Terminal, you will want to enter:
  sudo update_prebinding -root / -force
• A bunch of stuff will scroll by on the Terminal. Do not use the computer while this command is running, as it will slow your computer down quite a bit.
• As soon as this command finishes, immediately reboot your computer.

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Maintenance Schedule

If you have never done any of this maintenance before, now would be a good time to...

1. Repair the Disk
2. Repair Privileges
3. Force Periodic Maintenance
4. Update the Prebinding

After doing this initial maintenance follow these guidelines...

• Once a month (when you don't do any special installs, etc.)
  1. Repair the Disk
  2. Repair Privileges
  3. Force Periodic Maintenance
• After an application crash, power failure, or a force reboot, do this immediately:
  1. Repair the Disk
  2. Repair Privileges
  Then, if the computer slows down:
  1. Force Periodic Maintenance
  2. Update the Prebinding
• Before the installation of a big new application or system upgrade:
  1. Repair the Disk
  2. Repair Privileges
  If the system upgrade was more than just a simple OS incremental update, then rerun the following with the new, updated Disk Utility:
  1. Repair the Disk
  2. Repair Privileges

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