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Periodic Maintenance Scripts

Mac OS X has a set of maintenance scripts that it runs on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. These scripts clean up the system and keep it running smoothly. With MainMenu you can run any or all of these scripts manually.

To run the maintenance scripts:

The scripts consist of the following tasks:

Script Tasks

Daily maintenance

  • Cleans and rotates log files older than 60 days
  • Removes scratch, temp, and junk files
  • Cleans system messages

Weekly maintenance

  • Updates the locate database
  • Updates the whatis database
  • Rotates longer-term log files

Monthly maintenance

  • Performs login accounting
  • Rotates even more long-term log files like wtmp and fax.log

See also

System Tasks
Update Locate Database
Update Whatis Database