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I finally rebooted the iBook this morning after 10 days uptime. When I woke it up, the mouse cursor refused to respond to the Wacom Graphire II mouse (which is the only pointing device I've found that supports multiple pointing device drag&drop - sort of), and no amount of unplugging and replugging the connector at the USB hub (which usually works) would bring it to life. It took about four minutes for all of my open applications to shut down and the system to log out. Then about another three minutes to reboot, at which point I discovered that the Finder keyboard configuration selector icon had disappeared, which has started happening after reboots since I upgraded to OS 10.2.6. Since I simply can't work without TypeIt4Me macros, I ran the TypeIt4Me installer, which requires another logout/login. Sigh. After the second reboot, the keyboard icon was back, but now the mouse cursor had gone nuts, jitterbugging around the desktop without input. Arrgh! Reboot again. Third time the charm, so to speak. I now had both normal cursor response and TypeIt4Me. In a letter below, Dave Clark asks why I dislike reboots........ Wasting half an hour just getting the computer rebooted is not one of my favorite pastimes. At least in the Classic OS, when you restart you can expect everything to still work properly, at least in my 11 years experience. MacFixIt has posted another installment of their series of articles about OS 9/OS X migration issues, entitled the "Mac OS 9 Refugee Manual, Part 1." The latest article covers the following topics:
I. Why stick with Mac OS 9? Performance and future app development
Some snippets:
"One of the key differences that allows some applications to perform better in Mac OS 9 is that it is a cooperative multitasking operating system."
"Also, Mac OS 9 uses a completely different memory system when compared to Mac OS X. While Mac OS 9's "real" memory model – opposed to Mac OS X's true virtual memory model – is very fast." That would seem to provide two plausible explanations as to why I and many others find OS 9 a much faster performer than OS X in most applications, especially on less powerful Macs. The article also notes:
"...this solution is only readily accessible by Mac service providers, but it shows that Mac OS 9 boots are not impossible on Apple's new machines....Unfortunately, it is unlikely that this hack will work for machines based on the IBM PowerPC 970 processor." So the argument that Apple was obliged to end OS 9 booting for engineering reasons, at least on G4 machines, appears to hold little water. My contention has been that it was a policy decision to deliberately and arbitrarily end OS 9 boot support in order to goose OS X acceptance and developer support. In the case of the G5s of course the engineering excuse is objectively legitimate. It would have been uneconomic to allocate resources to making the G5 motherboards OS 9 bootable. Favorite Apps And Rebooting Memory Usage FTP From The Finder Fav OSX apps Re: OS X Odyssey 367 - A Solution To Progressive Performance Degradation With Uptime? From Dave Clark Hi Charles, Please indulge me for what may seem like a trivial question. What's the big deal with a restart of your Mac? In Odyssey 367, you and the anonymous reader make it sound as if one wants to avoid a restart at all costs. I routinely reboot OS X 10.2.6 every several days, give or take, and don't mind at all. I do so when I have a couple of spare minutes...no problem. I know some users act like it's some kind of contest; to see who can log the most uptime, but I can't imagine there's any real reason to do so. Is there? Perhaps it's the relaunching of all the apps that make it annoying for you; just wondering. I enjoy your stuff. Keep up the good work.
Regards,
Hi Dave;
It's probably at least partly irrational, but not entirely (see above). I just HATE rebooting. I hated it in the Classic OS and I hate it even worse in OS X because it takes longer and then there's Classic mode to start up, etc.
And yes, I usually have somewhare between 15 and 25 applications and utilities started up, just as I did in Classic. I don't like starting up apps either, although that's one thing that's not *quite* as painful in OS X thanks to preeemptive multitasking.
Then there's the dozen or more Tex Edit Plus documents I usually have open and windowshaded, maybe two dozen tabbed browser windows in Safari and Mozilla; half a dozen more open and hidden in iCab (this looms large whren you;re on a dialup connection that gives you 26,400 bps on good days), etcetera and so on. It usually takes me a good 15-20 minutes to get everthing back up and running after a reboot, not counting downloading the Web pages again.
Charles From Ken. Cavaliere-Klick This may be a little out of date but you're "favorite apps" comments had me thinking. I don't have any in Jaguar. Not one gives me that "wow" feeling. "Nice" but not "wow". I do have to thank you for TigerLaunch and Tex-Edit Plus (which I'm still exploring). Oddly Gimp-Print comes closest to "wow" since I can finally get some decent prints but it's a printer driver! For the most part I use AppleWorks (needs much help but not bad for free), PhotoShop Elements 2, Safari, Mail, TigerLaunch and that's about it for apps. The rest fall into the "nice but" class. To be sure, there's apps I want but the price is far too high or they are not available for X. As for rebooting, I find I shutdown more and suspend less with X than I did with 9. You're right, Jag seems to work better with a fresh reboot. This has a very creepy Windows feeling. 9 I expected to reboot now and then, not Jaguar. Thanks for the great articles and advice.
Hi Ken;
What about browsers? I find OS X browsers to be faster and cooler than Classic versions.
Rebooting? Sigh.
Charles
From Craig D Sutherland Charles, Some thoughts and observations about the article in Applelinks today. BSD uses all the memory it can for disk caching. The pthcpuMonitor show that by indicating that Used memory is close to the amount of memory you have in your machine. Used memory, however is made up of wired, active and inactive pages. Wired memory is never pages in or out, it is locked and is used by the kernel. Active memory may be what you are wanting to monitor. These are pages of memory that are currently in use by the system and applications. Inactive memory are pages that known memory content but have had no active memory use in some time. Free memory have no known content and are immediately usable. In BSD, a Page daemon (background process) is used for maintaining some amount of free memory. It runs all the time a maintains a certain percentage of memory (5% ??). Initially the number of pages of inactive memory is set to maintain a target amount- usually 33% of memory, but is tuned automatically over time. As the daemon scans the inactive list from the oldest to the youngest it does something to each page. If the page is clean and unreferenced, it moves it to the free list. If the page has been referenced by an active process, it moves it to the active list. If the page is dity and being written to the swap file, it skips it for now. If the page is not dirty and not being actively used, it is written back to disk. After a scan, the daemon compares the inactive list it just created and the target inactive size. If it is the current list is smaller than the target, it starts scanning the active memory list to bring some pages from active back into inactive. Swapping is implemented when either a process has been inactive for 20 seconds, or when the daemon cannot keep up with page faults. Page faults are generated when a required page is not in physical memory (RAM). The daemon places the page back in RAM from the hard disk where is had been placed. When swapping, the daemon takes the process which has been running for the longest time and swaps it completely to the hard drive. So, pages move from active to inactive all the time. Pageins from the hard drive occur at start up when programs and process are read from the hard drive, when an application that is not still in inactive memory is started, or when there has been some portion of a process that has been paged-out or written to the hard drive. We need to step back and look at what is being done during page in and page out. Page in is reading from disk. With PTHCPUMonitor Details open, launch an app which you have not used in a long time. Watch the pageins. Ahha!. I have noticed when I am downloading a lot of large files, the number of pageouts reported goes up big time. You can check this and see if you agree. So, I/O has a direct impact on pageins and pageouts. There is huge effort put into developing algorithms to handle memory use in the fastest and most stable way. Those are often conflicting goals. Each OS has chosen a set of decisions from a very long list of priorities and then implemented a design to best meet that decision set. The "personality" of the group making those decisions is also part of the process. Microsoft has a very complex (hell, they're all complex) algorithm that is fast but also more unstable and has a hard time improving it because of their culture and position. They repeat the same errors with the "not designed here" and "we are right because marketing says so." Linux makes errors because of their lack of experience and history, but addresses errors quickly and effectively. These quick and dirty graphic tools we have available to "see" what is going on can be very very misleading. They are fun to watch and a good place to start to be exposed to some of the underlying workings, but are limited. Way too long an email, but you have a large audience and hopefully as people have a chance to learn more about what is the cause of different computer behaviors there will be good exchange of ideas. On your iBook, try A utility like Cocktail to clean all caches. Also delete those swapfiles in /private/var/vm. The current file is swapfile0. If the system has to search through lots of data on disk before executing the rest of its process, that can add time.
HTH
Hi Craig;
Not too long at all. A nice, thorough but concise tutorial. Thanks!
Memory Stick and Memory Usage Getter show the three different types of memory. I do run Cocktail about once every week or ten days. Great little utility.
Thanks for the tip about manually deleting the excess swapfiles. I didn't know you could do that safely. However, it seems you have to be logged in as root?
Charles
From Robert McMahan Matt Schultz writes:
Unless I am misunderstanding what he is looking for, OS X can access FTP sites directly from the Finder. I don’t have much need to access FTP sites but I just tried it and it works. I have the ftp.gnu.org server on my desktop right now. Click on the “Go” menu in the Finder and go down to the “Connect to server...” command. When a window opens up, enter the address in the “Address” field, click the “Connect” button and after a short period of time, an icon appears on the desktop. The FTP site looks just like another network drive on the desktop. The icon is a globe setting on top of a drive enclosure. From John R. Brauer Charles, A favorite which I haven't seen on any lists yet: Organizer. A spectacular PIM with great flexibility, capacity, but only available on MacOS. I also REALLY like Runtime Revolution, the hands down heir to the HyperCard throne. Sincerely,
John R. Brauer, Psy.D.
Thanks for sharing those picks, John.
Charles
The OS X Odyssey archives may be accessed here: Note: Letters to Moore's Mailbag may or may not be published at the editor's discretion. Correspondents' email addresses will NOT be published unless the correspondent specifically requests publication. Letters may be edited for length and/or context. Opinions expressed in postings to Moore's MailBag are those of the respective correspondents and not necessarily shared or endorsed by the Editor and/or Applelinks management. If you would prefer that your message not appear in Moore's Mailbag, we would still like to hear from you. Just clearly mark your message "NOT FOR PUBLICATION," and it will not be published. CM
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