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OSX Maintenance-Cocktail?Disc Warrior?

post #1 of 24
2/4/04 at 7:15pm
Thread Starter 
I remember someone mentioning the shareware 'cocktail' and I just noticed it is available as a download from Apples own website. What is this program good for and if anyone here has used it do you recommend it? From what I have tried to research Unix performs certain tasks in the middle of the night but only if the computer is on, but these tasks can be forced through in terminal. Cocktail helps make the process easier-is this correct or am i confusing it with another program?

Also, is there any utility that is most recommended for OSX? I have heard good things about Disc Warrior, bad things about Norton Utilities, and neither good nor bad about Techtool Pro. Any opinions?
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post #2 of 24
2/4/04 at 7:20pm
Quote:
Originally posted by steve666
From what I have tried to research Unix performs certain tasks in the middle of the night but only if the computer is on, but these tasks can be forced through in terminal. Cocktail helps make the process easier-is this correct or am i confusing it with another program?

That's exactly right. Cocktail is just one of many little freeware apps that will force the system to perform its routine maintenance scripts. They're all essentially the same tools with different interfaces.

Quote:
Also, is there any utility that is most recommended for OSX? I have heard good things about Disc Warrior, bad things about Norton Utilities, and neither good nor bad about Techtool Pro. Any opinions?

Also correct.

Stay AWAY from Norton.
Get Disk Warrior.

TechTool... Eh, I haven't heard enough positive or negative reviews to really judge either. I've never used it.
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post #3 of 24
2/4/04 at 8:22pm
Quote:
Originally posted by Brad
That's exactly right. Cocktail is just one of many little freeware apps that will force the system to perform its routine maintenance scripts. They're all essentially the same tools with different interfaces.
....

A point of clarification: Cocktail is shareware, not freeware. It costs money. I made the switch to OnyX. I can't say that it is better than Cocktail, but it is free. It works and you can't beat the price.
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post #4 of 24
2/5/04 at 2:38am
Quote:
Originally posted by steve666
... Any opinions?

well, i tried out a lot of the shareware stuff, cocktail, Xupport and the like. basically they do all the same, as brad mentioned.

but now i regularily perform three basic tasks in the terminal, which suit my safety interests pretty well:

sudo periodic daily --> that command removes log files
sudo periodic weekly --> that command rebuild some databases file structure
sudo periodic monthly --> and that command fix something ... er ... else (er ... but it is good anyway)
" I will not commit anything to memory that I can get from another source . . . "
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" I will not commit anything to memory that I can get from another source . . . "
ALBERT EINSTEIN
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post #5 of 24
2/5/04 at 4:43am
Quote:
Originally posted by Mr. Me
A point of clarification: Cocktail is shareware, not freeware. It costs money. I made the switch to OnyX. I can't say that it is better than Cocktail, but it is free. It works and you can't beat the price.

I chose that word on purpose because it is surrounded by other freeware apps that do just the same. I don't see the need to pay someone for an app that was probably a developer's first app and was made using some tutorials on the web. Would I charge you for the watercolor painting I made in second grade? No! That's what some "shareware" developers look like they are doing.

The first GUI-driven maintenance program (and at a time was the only one) for Mac OS X was MacJanitor. It's just as free today as it was a couple years ago and still works perfectly.
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post #6 of 24
2/5/04 at 5:54am
Quote:
Originally posted by Brad
I chose that word on purpose because it is surrounded by other freeware apps that do just the same. I don't see the need to pay someone for an app that was probably a developer's first app and was made using some tutorials on the web. Would I charge you for the watercolor painting I made in second grade? No! That's what some "shareware" developers look like they are doing.

The first GUI-driven maintenance program (and at a time was the only one) for Mac OS X was MacJanitor. It's just as free today as it was a couple years ago and still works perfectly.

Yes, MacJanitor was the first and still works perfectly. For reasons that I don't entirely understand, it gets lost in the discussion--even by me. I must, however, urge against including Cocktail in a list of freeware utilities when it is not one of them. It implies that Cocktail is also free when it clearly is not. Those of us who care about such things should always give clear and accurate information.
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post #7 of 24
2/5/04 at 7:27am
manjanitor and ONYX
Tsunami Steve
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post #8 of 24
2/5/04 at 8:01am
that's odd. the version of cocktail i have is "Donation Ware"

which is freeware if you're cheap, shareware if you're not.
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post #9 of 24
2/5/04 at 9:40am
I use cocktail and have not had any problems with it. As others have said, you can find freeware that will do some (all?) of what cocktail will do.

I have yet to try Techtool Pro 4. However, I can say that I ordered it in November of 2003, had my credit card charged in December, but have yet to receive my CD. I sent an email to the company and had no response. I then phoned them in mid-January. The woman assured me the software was sent to me in December, and that she would put another copy in the mail.

The first week of February is nearly at an end and I still have nothing to show for my $105. I have seen good reviews of Techtool Pro 4, but I have also read posts of people who had experiences similar to mine. The software might be good, but at this point, my opinion of the service is that it is terrible!

Disk Warrior = good stuff. I have seen the latest version take care of a few drives at my work.
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post #10 of 24
2/5/04 at 12:00pm
Quote:
Originally posted by alcimedes
that's odd. the version of cocktail i have is "Donation Ware"

which is freeware if you're cheap, shareware if you're not.

The older versions of Cocktail were donationware. You might be running one of those. He only recently started charging for it. I think Cocktail is a good little utility, but it was weird that he kinda silently changed it from donationware to shareware. I used to use Cocktail but I just use the terminal window now. I spend enough time in now that just typing a few commands isn't too big of a deal.
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post #11 of 24
2/5/04 at 12:08pm
Quote:
Originally posted by foad
The older versions of Cocktail were donationware. You might be running one of those. He only recently started charging for it. I think Cocktail is a good little utility, but it was weird that he kinda silently changed it from donationware to shareware.

Well, Mr. Me, there's your answer as to the confusion from above. The copy I still had of Cocktail was also not limited and was classified as donationware.

That said, I won't be upgrading or buying it. As I said before, everything that Cocktail does is doable by terminal commands or other free utilities. Maybe I should pick up a beginners Cocoa book, copy down some well-known shell commands, and start selling my own version too.
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post #12 of 24
2/5/04 at 12:39pm
I like maintain1 .
-=:[T]:=-
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post #13 of 24
2/5/04 at 2:15pm
...and I just downloaded and installed Macaroni, after reading about it in the latest issue of MacWorld. It is very small, sits in the system prefs and is entirely automated. Nice little app.
MacBook Pro 15" (Unibody)/2.4GHz Core 2 Duo/2 GB RAM/250GB HD/SuperDrive
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iMac G3 333 MHz/96 MB...

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iMac 20"/2 GHz Core 2 Duo/2 GB RAM/250 GB/SuperDrive
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post #14 of 24
2/5/04 at 2:50pm
Thread Starter 
Lots to choose from. I wonder why Apple includes cocktail on its site but not the others? I also wonder why Apple doesnt make it easier to run those tasks without any help?

Now, what to try-Macjanitor, Maintain, Macaroni, Onyx?
Decisions, decisions
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post #15 of 24
2/5/04 at 6:27pm
Quote:
Originally posted by steve666
Lots to choose from. I wonder why Apple includes cocktail on its site but not the others? I also wonder why Apple doesnt make it easier to run those tasks without any help?

...

What do you mean? The tasks run automatically if you do nothing at all after you power up your computer?
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post #16 of 24
2/5/04 at 6:35pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally posted by Mr. Me
What do you mean? The tasks run automatically if you do nothing at all after you power up your computer?

They run automatically in the middle of the night. If your computer is off, they dont run.There should be an easy way to just run them yourself just like we can verify permissions ourself.
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post #17 of 24
2/6/04 at 9:05am
i have both cocktail and techtool pro 4.
cocktail really speeded up my entire system.
techtool pro is more diagnostics and only limited performance enhancing routines.
you really need both.

norton is pure evil. dont go there.
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post #18 of 24
2/6/04 at 3:07pm
Thread Starter 
I decided to try things myself through the terminal.

I did all 3 sudo things, but I thought the commands could just be typed in the terminal window. However, everytime i hit the return key to start a new line the previous line kept getting repeated. So, I went under file-enter new command line and typed in the first daily sudo. then after that was done I opened a new command and did the weekly, etc. Funny thing is the window never really says the process was completed unless I clicked on this little odd icon on the right side, then it came up that it was completed. Hope I did it right.It also gives the option of doing it in a shell? I didnt click that option.

Then, I performed a prebinding. After it was done it said about 1400 files were prebinded, but 68 files couldnt be. I have no idea why or what this means if anything. All I know is that my computer is working fine as usual.
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post #19 of 24
2/6/04 at 3:28pm
Quote:
All I know is that my computer is working fine as usual.

Thats the interesting thing, if you keep your computer finely tuned with every little method out there on a regular basis you are probably not going to notice much of a difference. Now if you have not had any of this stuff running for like over a year your probably going to notice *something* at-least.

I usually never bother running any of this stuff, by the time it all builds up to make an impact on my system Apple has released the next 10.X upgrade and I find my self doing another clean install so...
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post #20 of 24
2/6/04 at 5:45pm
Quote:
Originally posted by steve666
They run automatically in the middle of the night. If your computer is off, they dont run.There should be an easy way to just run them yourself just like we can verify permissions ourself.

What happens if the computer is asleep?
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post #21 of 24
2/6/04 at 6:00pm
Quote:
Originally posted by JBL
What happens if the computer is asleep?

Then the automatic scripts never run. The computer has to be on and "awake" for cron jobs to activate at their assigned times.

This is precisely why utilities such as MacJanitor exist.
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post #22 of 24
2/7/04 at 12:32pm
I use diskwarrior to rebuilt my directory, superb job. Techtools is a very good diagnostic program, I use it periodically as well, it's more of a check-if-everything-is-in-order program rather then a maintainance program. it checks your drives, ports, etc. also helps you find dead pixels, defrag (so unneccesary) and for those who are security freaks, secure deletion of free space.
The bored one.
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post #23 of 24
2/7/04 at 2:09pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally posted by Ichiban_jay
I use diskwarrior to rebuilt my directory, superb job. Techtools is a very good diagnostic program, I use it periodically as well, it's more of a check-if-everything-is-in-order program rather then a maintainance program. it checks your drives, ports, etc. also helps you find dead pixels, defrag (so unneccesary) and for those who are security freaks, secure deletion of free space.

Techtool had a smaller free download for OS9, do they have one for OSX? Actually all it did was rebuild the desktop and I dont even know if thats still necessary in OSX.
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post #24 of 24
9/6/12 at 3:16am
Anyone aware of a similar progrma like Mac Janitor? I used to use it but it has not updated in a while and it will not run in Mountain Lion.
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