MacJanitor is a free tool for executing daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance scripts on your system.
As a software tool, MacJanitor is designed for use on Mac OS X by users who do not leave their computers on and awake 24 hours a day. This is particularly useful for laptop and energy-conscious home users, as it provides a way to run system maintenance tasks easily and quickly at the click of a button. Moreover, it allows these users to keep their machines well-maintained without having to leave them on all the time.
In order to understand the utility of MacJanitor, it is important to understand the history of Unix subsystems on Mac OS X. Originally, these subsystems were written for machines that were typically never shut off. Mac OS X inherits this assumption in version 1.x, and has many system maintenance tasks scheduled to run between 3 am and 5 am. There are also scripts designed to run weekly on weekends and monthly in the middle of the night. However, if these maintenance tasks are never run (as is often the case with laptops that are shut off at night), many log files and system databases may grow extremely large or fail to get backed up.
MacJanitor addresses this issue by providing users with a simple and efficient way to run system maintenance tasks on a periodic basis. Laptop users can click the "daily" button every morning (or every few days), while office workers can click the "weekly" button on Mondays. If you have not run these tasks for several weeks or more, the first time you use MacJanitor may take several minutes. Also, if your log files have grown extremely large and you are low on disk space, the tasks may have problems moving the files around and compressing them. However, after that, it typically takes less than a minute for each task.
The output of the task is displayed in the scrolling view in the bottom part of the window. If for some reason you feel the need, you may print the output of the system maintenance tasks (but why would you want to?). The latest version of MacJanitor is built for Panther and higher, making it Tiger compatible. Additionally, it now uses the 'periodic' tool instead of running the tasks directly. Overall, MacJanitor is a highly useful tool for Mac OS X users who want to keep their machines well-maintained without the need for constant on-time.
In order to understand the utility of MacJanitor, it is important to understand the history of Unix subsystems on Mac OS X. Originally, these subsystems were written for machines that were typically never shut off. Mac OS X inherits this assumption in version 1.x, and has many system maintenance tasks scheduled to run between 3 am and 5 am. There are also scripts designed to run weekly on weekends and monthly in the middle of the night. However, if these maintenance tasks are never run (as is often the case with laptops that are shut off at night), many log files and system databases may grow extremely large or fail to get backed up.
MacJanitor addresses this issue by providing users with a simple and efficient way to run system maintenance tasks on a periodic basis. Laptop users can click the "daily" button every morning (or every few days), while office workers can click the "weekly" button on Mondays. If you have not run these tasks for several weeks or more, the first time you use MacJanitor may take several minutes. Also, if your log files have grown extremely large and you are low on disk space, the tasks may have problems moving the files around and compressing them. However, after that, it typically takes less than a minute for each task.
The output of the task is displayed in the scrolling view in the bottom part of the window. If for some reason you feel the need, you may print the output of the system maintenance tasks (but why would you want to?). The latest version of MacJanitor is built for Panther and higher, making it Tiger compatible. Additionally, it now uses the 'periodic' tool instead of running the tasks directly. Overall, MacJanitor is a highly useful tool for Mac OS X users who want to keep their machines well-maintained without the need for constant on-time.
What's New
Version 1.3: N/A