[P1] Sleep or Shutdown?

[david]

On Tuesday, May 27, 2003, at 11:40  PM, Pat D.Stephens wrote:

> Can anyone tell me what these functions are?  I bought maintenance 
> disks, but am scared to use them and haven't needed it except for 
> 'fixing permissions' since Dec.  What IS maintenance in OSX?

That's a really good question and I'll answer it by way of describing 
the Compaq in my office. I have an old 486 running an early distro of 
RedHat linux. I installed in over the summer about 6 years ago and it 
has been running 24/7 ever since. We use it as our email server and for 
intranet. In all that time (knock on wood) I've not needed the backups 
that are performed each night. During the summer I take it down briefly 
to clean out the innards and run a system diagnostic. I look at the log 
files once a month. That's it.

The underlying foundation of OS X is strong and time tested but the 
architecture above it is much newer and not so well tested. That we 
need to fix permissions so often speaks volumes.

FWIW, I run Cocktail monthly. I fix permissions before AND after every 
system update. I run Disk First Aid from the CD once a month. So far 
DFA has found only minor problems. I'm glad that I now have DiskWarrior 
3 in my arsenal.


=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=
Good qualities are easier to destroy than bad ones, and therefore
uniformity is most easily achieved by lowering all standards.
  ~~ Bertrand Russell

David