Macintosh Cleaning tips
Since MAC OS X is UNIX based, it has a habit of running maintenance scripts during the night. Of course, most home systems are not left on at those times of the day.
There are three scripts:
- Daily (Designed to be run daily)
- Weekly (Designed to be run Weekly)
- Monthly (etc)
To run these scripts manually you can use a 3rd party app. There are many around
MAC janitor is an example.
Mac Janitor will allow you to run all the scripts from one button.
Please note the weekly script will take longer than the others will
Alternatively, they can be run manually by typing ?
sudo periodic <scriptname>? into the terminal replace <scriptname> with daily or weekly etc. and remove quotation marks.
You will be asked for the administrator password
Repairing Permissions
UNIX has a permission setting for each file, which is sometimes altered by install programs and then not restored, this can slow the computer down as it may get confused when accessing that file as a different user. The repair procedure is simple. Open the disk utility from the utilities folder.
Select the start-up disk from the left menu
Select first aid
Repair Disk Permissions
It is recommended you run this after any installation and to be safe, before one.
Standard Disk Check
Unfortunally, you cannot repair a start-up disk once booted, so if you don?t want to bother booting from a CD you can enter a type of DOS interface at the boot sequence and run the command from there.
Restart the computer
Almost immediately hold down Apple (
) + S when a black interface appears let go
When you are given a prompt, enter
fsck this will then run the check and any repairs will happen automatically. If many errors are found then you should run it twice.
When done type ?
exit? to boot normally,
This does not work if panther?s disk journaling is enabled on that volume
Managing Fonts
This is a simple procedure for disabling duplicate fonts that have accumulated in your system.
Open the font book from the applications folder (panther and above)
- Select all fonts and scroll down the list.
- Any font with a bullet point next to it indicates there is a duplicate font that should be disabled
- Select that font and select resolve duplicates from the edit menu.
Do this for any font with a bullet point
It may also help system performance if you disable any font you do not need, obviously start with exotic language fonts, and any fonts that look too similar to another one.
Simply click the font and press disable
Anti-aliasing fonts
One of the best features of MAC OS X, smooth fonts. If you are running on an older system, you may benefit from tweaking or disabling anti-aliased fonts.
Go to the appearance control panel
And alter the smoothing boundary to a higher number.
If you have not already, change the style to the one appropriate to your monitor or the one that looks best to you.
You can set a number higher than 12 by entering a command in the terminal (note: this will stop adobe Photoshop from loading, it must be reset to 12 or below to use Photoshop)
In
Jaguar type:
defaults write .GlobalPreferences AppleAntiAliasingThreshold 16
Replacing the 16 with whatever font size you want. Setting it to a very high number (IE 128) will effectively disable smoothed fonts and increase performance.
In
Panther the command is
defaults write -g AppleAntiAliasingThreshold 16
(replace 16 with number required)
In order to see the changes you will need to rerun a program or reboot the computer to take complete effect.
Disk Journalling panther only
This feature can help restore files in the event of a crash, however, home users may not require it and disabling can increase performance.
You can disable or enable it from the disk utility:
Select disk and choose disable journaling from the file menu
The information in this article is discussed
here
Originally posted by Downquark1
Join CF
You are here: 
