10.4: Reschedule periodic maintenance tasks

More Mac Sites:
Macworld
MacUser
iPhone Central

Pick of the Week - Nov 10 [Show all picks]
Path Finder 5 - A feature-laden Finder replacement

12,000 hints and counting!

Tue, May 3 2005 at 9:13AM PDT • Contributed by: Ganesha

Mac OS X 10.4 has as changed the method by which the periodic system tasks periodic (daily, weekly, and monthly) are called. You can no longer change their execution time by modifying the system crontab. If you wish to change the times these tasks run, you will have to make changes to the following files. All live in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons, and each is named:

Daily: com.apple.periodic-daily.plist
Weekly: com.apple.periodic-weekly.plist
Monthly: com.apple.periodic-monthly.plist

Since these files are owned by root, the easiest way to change them is with sudo and your favorite command line text editor:

sudo pico System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.periodic-daily.plist

The relevant parts to change are:

<key>Hour</key>
<integer>3</integer>
<key>Minute</key>
<integer>15</integer>

Change these values to whatever you'd like.

[robg adds: Using sudo, I'd also recommend a backup of the files before you start, just in case...]

•

Currently 0.00 / 5
1
2
3
4
5

(0 votes cast)

[15,586 views]

Hint Options

10.4: Reschedule periodic maintenance tasks | 22 comments | Create New Account

Click here to return to the '10.4: Reschedule periodic maintenance tasks' hint

The following comments are owned by whomever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.

Anacron?
Authored by: mithras on Tue, May 3 2005 at 10:52AM PDT

Does launchd do an anacron-like "catch-up" of actions that it's missed? Or is there a way to enable such functionality on a per-item basis?

---
--
Listen To My iTunes Library (6500+ songs, iTunes 4 required)

[ Reply to This | # ]

Anacron?
Authored by: luhmann on Tue, May 3 2005 at 11:44AM PDT

You can use Anacron for the mac.

Anacron?
Authored by: sahilt on Tue, May 3 2005 at 12:04PM PDT

It's not immediately clear how to setup Anacron to 'catch-up' tasks that are not run via cron (but instead via launchd). Does anyone want to write-up a basic HOWTO?

After all, it will be useful (especially for use iBook/Powerbook users), and certainly not more basic than instructions on removing Dashboard from the Dock. ;-)

launchd
Authored by: nick on Tue, May 3 2005 at 12:37PM PDT

there is an option to run launchagents and launchdaemons not only at certain time, but periodically. i couldn't figure out, whether a periodic daemon gets started, if it was dued while the computer slept.

Anacron?
Authored by: mudpup on Tue, May 3 2005 at 2:09PM PDT

On my lap top I run the cron jobs, manually when it's convenient.
Open termial



sudo sh /etc/daily

sudo sh /etc/weekly

sudo sh /etc/monthly

10.4: Reschedule periodic maintenance tasks
Authored by: gaspode on Tue, May 3 2005 at 12:40PM PDT

Yes you can use anacron. But this is not what we want.

We want to use Apples shiny launchd to start these jobs. Somebody has to figure out how to make these settings.

10.4: Reschedule periodic maintenance tasks
Authored by: akakie@acsalaska on Tue, May 3 2005 at 6:22PM PDT

XJanitor.pl worked for me through 10.3.9, but the structure is now changed. I use a PowerBook G4 which is off at the critical times when maintenance runs. I need the "catch up" on missed tasks ability and I suppose many others do as well.

Does anyone know if Apple's new version includes the catch up capability? If not, I hope someone is working on it. It is probably beyond me.

XJanitor.pl
Authored by: googoo on Tue, May 3 2005 at 11:52PM PDT

XJanitor.pl still works. It runs the periodic scripts directly (if needed). Just execute it from the terminal (or whatever method you normally use).

You cannot use cron anymore, though (unless you reconfigure to run it). If you want to run XJanitor.pl on a schedule, you will have to use launchd. I am sure we will read MUCH more on launchd soon.

-Mark

Cron does run
Authored by: googoo on Wed, May 4 2005 at 12:10AM PDT

Let me correct myself: cron is running on Tiger without any need to reconfigure. I guess I should have tested it before saying that it did not run!

-Mark

Cron does run
Authored by: Ric_D on Thu, May 5 2005 at 7:05PM PDT

Hmmm... well, I can see in Activity Monitor that cron is running, but my jobs in /etc/crontab are not executing. This is driving me crazy...

Cron does run
Authored by: m1dg3 on Fri, May 6 2005 at 12:21PM PDT

The Tiger install removes all your entries from /etc/crontab.

If you put them back in they will run.

XJanitor.pl
Authored by: macmaxbh on Tue, May 17 2005 at 6:28PM PDT

It doesn't work for me--if I check the Xjanitor.out log I get:
sh: line 1: periodic: command not found

10.4: Reschedule periodic maintenance tasks
Authored by: derekhed on Wed, Jun 15 2005 at 3:23PM PDT

I would like to re-enable XJanitor to run on my laptop, but I am worried that the launchd process will still run the maintenance tasks if I leave it running all night. I assume that I would need to disable the launchd part that fires off the maintenance tasks if I am going to use XJanitor. I have some log scripts that rely on the logs being there, such as webalizer.

Has anyone addressed this issue?

Launchd manual settings
Authored by: ukkarhu on Wed, May 4 2005 at 2:43AM PDT

Launchd runs the periodic scripts automagically. Look in /var/log for daily.out, weekly.out and monthly.out. Check the datestamp of the log files to confirm when they ran. You can also use launchd to run these manually i.e.


sudo launchd periodic daily

Andy P.

Launchd manual settings
Authored by: ukkarhu on Wed, May 4 2005 at 2:58AM PDT

Although the above works, by looking in the man pages, it seems the correct way to manually start daemons is:


sudo launchctl start com.apple.periodic-daily

where the phrase after 'start' is the label as defined in the xml plist file and displayed with the command:


sudo launchctl list

used launchd for ichatlocationscript and works fine
Authored by: nick on Wed, May 4 2005 at 9:24AM PDT

i configured launchd to periodically run an applescript that changes the ichatstatus to my current network-location. it works fine. i made this plist-file in ~/Library/LaunchAgents :

 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
        <key>Debug</key>
        <false/>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>iChatLocation</string>
        <key>LowPriorityIO</key>
        <true/>
        <key>Nice</key>
        <integer>10</integer>
        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
                <string>/usr/bin/osascript</string>
                <string>/Users/niko/bin/ichatlocation.scpt</string>
        </array>
        <key>RunAtLoad</key>
        <true/>
        <key>ServiceDescription</key>
        <string>Change iChat Location to Network</string>
        <key>StartInterval</key>
        <integer>180</integer>
        <key>UserName</key>
        <string>niko</string>
</dict>
</plist>

it is labeled "iChatLocation", runs with low IO priority and with nice 10, starts an applescript in the bin-folder in my homedir, runs at load (maybe i wouldn't need that) and then every 180 seconds with my (niko) userrights. even better of course would be, if s/o figured out how to run stuff at network-changes. i started it with:

Nikomat:~ niko$ launchctl load Library/LaunchAgents/iChatLocation.plist

i can check, that its running:

Nikomat:~ niko$ launchctl list
iChatLocation
Nikomat:~ niko$

configd better than launchd
Authored by: hughescr on Wed, May 4 2005 at 7:14PM PDT

The way you run stuff at network switches rather than periodically is to hook into configd, not launchd. See here for details.

configd better than launchd / right...
Authored by: nick on Thu, May 5 2005 at 9:44AM PDT

...but when i think about it... perhaps in my case its better to run stuff periodically as the script exits anyway if nothing has changed AND more important it relies on ichat having logged in... which usually isn't the case immediatelly after the networkchange, but some 10 seconds later...

used launchd for ichatlocationscript and works fine
Authored by: jonbauman on Fri, May 6 2005 at 11:35PM PDT

You actually don't need to set the user explicitly if you put it in your own ~/Library/LaunchAgents directory. The default is to run as the user that added the agent to launchd.

One thing I can't figure out is how to run commands with spaces in the name. I've tried quoting, no quoting, and backslash escaping, but nothing seems to work

---
jon

[ Reply to This | # ]

10.4: Reschedule periodic maintenance tasks
Authored by: gsgm on Sun, May 8 2005 at 8:23AM PDT

When I first tried the hint, I ended up opening a blank file. I believe the actual command should be;

sudo pico /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.periodic-daily.plist

(Note the "/" in front of System)

use defaults to reset
Authored by: joelbruner on Tue, May 26 2009 at 9:59AM PDT

Here's the settings I use at work, I flipped everything from am to pm and changed the weekly to run on Monday instead of Saturday

sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.periodic-daily StartCalendarInterval -dict-add 'Hour' -int '15'
sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.periodic-weekly StartCalendarInterval -dict-add 'Hour' -int '15'
sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.periodic-weekly StartCalendarInterval -dict-add 'Weekday' -int '1'
sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.periodic-monthly StartCalendarInterval -dict-add 'Hour' -int '13'

reset file perms
Authored by: joelbruner on Tue, May 26 2009 at 10:49AM PDT

Forgot that defaults will trash the permissions on a file, so add back read ability for group and others

sudo chmod go+r /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.periodic-*

Search

From our Sponsor...

User Functions

Don't have an account yet? Sign up as a New User
Lost your password?

What's New:

Hints

3 new Hints in the last 24 hours

Comments last 2 days

Links last 2 weeks

No recent new links

What's New in the Forums?

The Editor's Corner...

Here are some of my (robg) other projects...

•	The Robservatory My blog - Macs, tech, etc.
•	Mac OS X Power Hound The best of Hints in print
•	Inside iWork An iWork training DVD
•	Macworld Column, features, online...

Hints by Topic

News from Macworld

The macosxhints Poll

iPad_poll_#1

Other polls | 7,016 votes | 76 comments

Visit other IDG sites: