Possible new optimizing trick

kcmac · September 20, 2002 9:04PM

May have stumbled onto a possible way of optimizing OS X Jag. It may sound silly at first but give it a try. I can honestly say my iBook 500 has never run this well since I initially got it in June 2001 with 10.0.3. I have never done a clean reinstall. I have always taken the simple upgrade approach which I recently did again with 10.2.1. Here goes.

Download the 10.2.1 updater from Apple. Update your computer even if you already have 10.2.1. Restart your computer.

Do this 2 or 3 more times, restarting each time.

Then, insert your 10.2 install disk 1 and boot from it. (Do not install anything.) Go to the menubar and open disk utility. Run fix permissions. When this is done restart.

If your results are like mine, you will notice a difference.

I did not come up with this potential solution. I found it in an Apple discussion forum regarding a different topic.

It may appear redundant and it may very well be. Give it a try if you have a little time. You just may be surprised.

altivec_2.0 · September 20, 2002 9:12PM

Holy crud. This really works!! My computers almost twice as fast. Thanks!!!

kcmac · September 20, 2002 9:19PM

In fact it made you so fast that you did it all in less than 8 minutes.

Be skeptical, that's fine. It did work for me however.

kcmac · September 20, 2002 9:21PM

[ 09-20-2002: Message edited by: kcmac ]

buonrotto · September 20, 2002 9:52PM

Some kind of super pre-binding??

drewprops · September 20, 2002 10:00PM

<ahem>

I'd love to speed up this 600Mhz iBook but I'm afraid to do anything too radical. Why don't some more of you folks do this first and let me know how it works??

Ever timid,

Drew

noahj · September 20, 2002 10:49PM

Tried it. The computer still works and it did find a lot of errors, but I am finding no extreme speedup on this iMac 400. Anyone else?

eman · September 20, 2002 11:05PM

I'll wait to try this until more people do it.

nebagakid · September 20, 2002 11:38PM

as am I, I have the sign "No Hacks" near my computer to warn me of screwing it up! <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" /> <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" />

kcmac · September 20, 2002 11:56PM

It has been fairly widely reported that fixing permissions with disk utility has shown some speed improvements. Macosxhints even reported this.

Previously I fixed permissions when booted in OS X. This was the first time that I used the installer disk to do it. Could be this is what helped.

Updating over an update is risky? I did it on both of my computers with absolutely no problems. I think it might be some kind of super binding. But then again, I have no idea. I don't think there is much here that could hurt either.

Over the last year and a half, I have downloaded, tried and thrown away a lot of software. I have done a lot of iMovies that pretty well filled up my 20gig internal hard drive. Constantly moving these on and off my iBook.

I have seen some slowdowns over this time and strongly considered a clean install for Jag. Didn't want to take the time and did the simple upgrade.

This trick helped me. Your mileage may vary.

donny · September 21, 2002 2:18AM

Link for this article you discovered on Apple's site, please...??

I have never heard Apple reccommend anything but caution and the correct order on installations of systems and system updates.

If it helps at all, I'm surprised you found this information on Apple's site.

My system is fast enough, thank-you....

ghost_user_name · September 21, 2002 2:41AM

By the way, you do not need to boot from the install CD to do this. Running Disk Utility from your hard drive does the exact same thing. Unlike the "repair disk" part of Disk Utility, the "repair permissions" CAN be run on the startup drive.

[quote]Originally posted by BuonRotto:

Some kind of super pre-binding??<hr></blockquote>

[quote]Originally posted by EmAn:

I'll wait to try this until more people do it.<hr></blockquote>

There's no fancy trickery here and it has nothing to do with prebinding. There's no reason to wait before trying it. This simply scans ALL files on the drive, fixing the permissions and ownership on any that are incorrect. Specifically, files that have dab permissions are probably ones you've put in /Applications and /Library and sometimes the ones in /System if you've added some kinds of hacks.

I've been suggesting this for months, since the Repair Permissions utility was released for 10.1. I'm surprised you guys are just now catching on.

overhope · September 21, 2002 3:34AM

The "repair permissions" thing has been hanging around on Apple's boards for a couple of weeks, but seems to have disappeared. didn't do much for me, but my installation is pretty virgin.

I don't understand why running the 10.2.1 updater over an installed 10.2.1 system would have any effect: isn't it just going to run through, check everything that should be there for 10.2.1 is present and correct, then pre-bind it? Anyone got any light to shed on this?

ghost_user_name · September 21, 2002 4:57AM

You are right, Overhope. Reinstalling it two or three or twenty times will make no difference at all. It just replaces the exact same files over and over again. This should not affect your system performance in any way.

[ 09-21-2002: Message edited by: Brad ]

gnom · September 21, 2002 7:00AM

[quote]Originally posted by Brad:

 Unlike the "repair disk" part of Disk Utility, the "repair permissions" CAN be run on the startup drive.<hr></blockquote>

AFAIK it can only fix permissions on the startup drive, so booting from CD won't fix your HD.

cheers.

fryke · September 21, 2002 8:15AM

You've misunderstood this. It'll only repair permissions of your startup *harddisk partition*. Can't repair the CD, you know.

bunge · September 21, 2002 10:06AM

Does this in fact improve performance and if so, how?

l'ermite · September 21, 2002 12:34PM

Indeed, everything is quite a bit faster! (window resizing, web browsing, starting apps...)

eman · September 21, 2002 1:01PM

[quote]Originally posted by Brad:

By the way, you do not need to boot from the install CD to do this. Running Disk Utility from your hard drive does the exact same thing. Unlike the "repair disk" part of Disk Utility, the "repair permissions" CAN be run on the startup drive.

There's no fancy trickery here and it has nothing to do with prebinding. There's no reason to wait before trying it. This simply scans ALL files on the drive, fixing the permissions and ownership on any that are incorrect. Specifically, files that have dab permissions are probably ones you've put in /Applications and /Library and sometimes the ones in /System if you've added some kinds of hacks.

I've been suggesting this for months, since the Repair Permissions utility was released for 10.1. I'm surprised you guys are just now catching on.

<hr></blockquote>

Well if Brad says it's ok to do then it's ok and I'll do it

buonrotto · September 21, 2002 2:15PM

It probably is proportional to how many permissions were fixed. I had only a handful that were slightly off, and there's barely a change in performance on my iMac. I tend to repair my permissions fairly frequently (maybe once a month), sort of like my old habit of rebuilding the desktop in Classic.

eman · September 21, 2002 4:12PM

Okay, so I tried it and it fixed a lot of permissions but I haven't noticed much of a speed increase if one at all.

Possible new optimizing trick

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