Mactalent - Articles

Help - The beachballs are spinning!
- Do I need to do something?

by: Avi Learner, Miami Beach - FL Feb 7, 2003

on 2/7/03 1:43 AM, our friend Don Smith asks (from the GCMAC Listserv):

The longer I use OSX the more beachballs I get. At first I remarked at how stable X was, never seeming to be interrupted for much of anything. ...but over the last few months there has been a troubling trend. Multicolored rotating spheres or beach balls have begun to appear on my desktop at irregular intervals. No explanation. Just run the task manager (ie FORCE QUIT) and delete it, right? Not without a beach ball you don't. Has anyone else
seen this?

Yes Don I have. Consider the spinning "BeachBall" as a warning.
As great as OSX is, it is not totally infallible as Apple would have us all believe. That said though, the core of this operating system is a proven thoroughbred, and I have to commend Apple at looking down the odds, and surging ahead of the pack with this truly enlightened approach to computer OS. They are coming out with updates at a breakneck speed, and are improving things for modern MAC users as rapidly as humanly possible. One thing that OSX needs is to be left "ON" overnight on a regular basis. There are timed maintenance tasks controlled by "CRONS" (cron = timed task under UNIX), that are performed "overnight" that are core functions such as directory maintenance. You also need to use a disk utility such as Disk Warrior (my number one recommendation), to rebuild your directories and write a fresh copy of the primary (and backup) directories, every couple of weeks. Especially if you are adding or deleting files with any regularity. Leaving a laptop on overnight is something that most of us DO NOT ever do, so what then? There is a shareware program called "CRONAID" available on VersionTracker, that you can instlall, that will allow you to run these tasks on your schedule, instead of the machine’s. See the following:

Product Description:
" OS X has maintenance scripts that are supposed to be run daily, weekly, and monthly. Problem is they run at about three in the morning when lots of people's machines are off. cronaid will make sure that these scripts get run once your computer is on. Once you install it, it makes sure the scripts get run. No more user action needed, as it should be.

"Drive 10 by "Micromat", is a first attempt at a "complete" disk repair utility for OSX. Frankly I think that it is a bit pale in it’s performance, and reminds of when NORTON released it’s OS 8 version of Utilities. Just in case you don’t remember, if you ran this original version of Norton Utilities (3.0 - I think), it made your drive disappear and become unmountable. Fortunately all it took was to run Apple’s Disk First Aid to recover the drive. Not perfect, but Drive 10 does do a decnt and rapid job of clening up a drives files and system files. However, as a "Panic attacked" contract technician called in to perform an emergency repair, the first time tthis old version of Norton Utilities failed on me was a killer, and I lost that client once I told him that his drive and data, were gone. I have sworn off Norton utilities ever since. One small problem with "DRIVE 10" is that once run on a drive, it reports the volume size as "Zero", upon completion of a disk system repair. Again not a major problem unless one tends to panic. Simply running Disk warrior afterwards, repairs this error. Micromat is soon to release TechTool 4.0 for OSX which promises to be as complete a tool as TechTool 3.x is now for OS9. Other reports about Drive 10 seem to indicate that the program is simply a GUI interface for the built in maintenance routines provided free with OSX. While this latter "complaint" may be relevant to some, most of us would rather prefer to have our system tasks in a GUI, than have to go into the command line UNIX interface in order to perform a series of cryptic tasks with minimal feedback.
I have talked with folks at MICROMAT about TechTool 4.0, and they have assured me that they are diligently processing user feedback, and trying to include a "fix" for any contingency that OSX will eventually throw at us. I am still very wary of Norton Utilities, but some MAC users swear by them. Frankly I am one MAC fanatic that will not use software I have ever had to swear at with any regularity. Although, I guess at one time or another, there isn’t a piece of software I have ever used that didn’t receive an expletive thrown at it at least a time or two! So here is a quickie maintenance synopsis, Don:

Leave your computer on overnight at least once or twice a week.
Run Disk Warrior (under OS9) at least once every two to three weeks
Run Drive 10 at least once a month followed immediately by Disk Warrior

There is also a process called "Application pre-binding" that is handled automatically by OSX Jaguar. However, on earlier versions 10.0 through 10.1.5 that do not. I use a program called MOX Optimize to help with this:

Product Description:
" MOX Optimise is an application that allows you with some simple clicks to accelerate Mac OS X. With a simple GUI, tweak your system settings and configure many hidden system options. Easily use powerful UNIX commands to optimise your system without having to learn them. Automatic startup optimisation and scheduler for regular cleaning jobs."

Both Disk Warrior and Drive 10 include disk optimisers that will defragment your hard drive. While disk fragmentation was a real issue when we used 500mb hard drives (and smaller), I personally don't think that this is so much ofa performance issue now, with faster IDE hard disks of immense size (10 gigs or above). If you should decide to use a "defrag" utility, you will not notice significant performance increases, unless your fragmentation is extremely severe.The process is extremely long. A large 80 gig drive may take upwards of 10 hours or more to defragment, using the current crop of utilities. So be prepared to let this process run it's course, once you begin it. Even Disk Warrior can take quite a while to run on a large hard disk. So it might be a good idea to start the process as the last thing you do as you leave your office for the evening, or sign off of AOL <jk> for the night!

Avi Learner is co-owner of ADWEB Services a South Florida web design and hosting service specializing in Filemaker Pro database driven websites and cross platform Networking Integration. He is a regular contributor to the Gold Coast Mac User group newsletter, Tropical Mac. Also voted "Member of the Month" in Jan 2003 by GCMAC board.