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Re: Some cache wont clear
joemikeb #16135 06/18/11 03:42 PM
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Joe,
interesting.
Cocktail: so you don't use it anymore then?
Onyx -- if something is free but you don't need it, then why have it? It's just clutter.
MacPilot -- Launch services -- never heard of that. Of course I don't know a lot of things until a problem arises.
Tinker Tool. I'm amazed it solved this issue. Which cache did it flush that Cocktail did/could not?

This is what I run once a month:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/862/screenshot20110618at938.jpg/

Now I don't believe in upgrading Cocktail if Tinker tool is better. But I don't think Tinker tool has a button that will run the scripts, the caches, and the repair permission in one fell swoop right? With Tinkertool it seems you have to tab through several tabs and click several buttons which is tedious.

Joe, I would love to see you list of monthly maintenance. Once month I click that button in cocktail and I repair each hardrive manually. that's my monthly maintenance for my imac.

Re: Some cache wont clear
kevs #16136 06/18/11 05:54 PM
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Just for clarification for other readers of this thread: This is TinkerTool System (shareware), not TinkerTool (freeware), right? They do differ as to what they can do. The better one is, of course, TinkerTool System.

Last edited by macnerd10; 06/18/11 05:54 PM.

Alex
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Re: Some cache wont clear
macnerd10 #16137 06/18/11 06:11 PM
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I got the paid system 2 everyone mentioned.

Re: Some cache wont clear
kevs #16143 06/18/11 11:11 PM
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Perfect. I think it is an interesting thread comparing various maintenance apps for cache clearing. So, the consensus is to recommend TinkerTool System at least for this particular task. It also shows that other apps claiming to do the same thing fail to do it right. Always good to know. Thanks, kevs, for bringing this up.


Alex
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2.8 GHz Xeon Mac Pro 2010, 16 GB RAM, OS 10.11.2, Office 2011, LAN
Re: Some cache wont clear
kevs #16144 06/19/11 12:01 AM
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Originally Posted By: kevs

Cocktail: so you don't use it anymore then?
On the contrary I do use it on occassion as needed but I do not have it set up to run at a regular interval
Originally Posted By: kevs

Onyx -- if something is free but you don't need it, then why have it? It's just clutter.
I have it primarily because so many people use it that I like to have it around for testing and to verify things I post on FTM
Originally Posted By: kevs
MacPilot -- Launch services -- never heard of that. Of course I don't know a lot of things until a problem arises.

Agreed, but notbing can touch MacPilot for configuring OS X and OS X applications using hidden preference settings to fine tune your use of applications and the OS itself.
Originally Posted By: kevs
Tinker Tool. I'm amazed it solved this issue. Which cache did it flush that Cocktail did/could not?
In the first place TinkerTool is not what you used. You used TinkerTool System. Both are written by Marcel Bresink. TinkerTool was probably the first OS X configuration utility ever written and I have used it since OS X 1. TinkerTool System came along much later and as I said previously there is no overlap in functionality between the two other than TinkerTool System's ability to import the TinkerTool panes into its own GUI.
Originally Posted By: kevs

Joe, I would love to see you list of monthly maintenance. Once month I click that button in cocktail and I repair each hardrive manually. that's my monthly maintenance for my imac.

As OS X has matured I have gone from regular maintenance routines to a philospy of If it aint broke — don't fix it. The closest I come to regular preventative maintenance is continually running TechTool Protection or Drive Genius' Drive Pules routine in background to monitor drive health and provide early warning of volume damage or impending drive failure. Every six to 12 months I will use either TTP or DG to defragment and rebuild the volume structure more out of habit than anything else.


If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein
Re: Some cache wont clear
macnerd10 #16145 06/19/11 01:13 AM
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Originally Posted By: macnerd10
Perfect. I think it is an interesting thread comparing various maintenance apps for cache clearing. So, the consensus is to recommend TinkerTool System at least for this particular task. It also shows that other apps claiming to do the same thing fail to do it right. Always good to know. Thanks, kevs, for bringing this up.

Hmm... but we don't really know which cache was cleared, that (allegedly) nothing else would remove. It would have been real nice to know which file was causing the problem... so we're still left with something of a mystery here, [and that's far from "perfect".]

Re: Some cache wont clear
Hal Itosis #16149 06/19/11 03:00 AM
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Mac, ok! cool.

Joe:
"configuring OS X and OS X applications using hidden preference settings to fine tune your use of applications and the OS itself."

What does this mean? never heard of hidden preferences.

So the more expensive system 2 does not have Tinker Tool regular on it?? odd no? Boy, it's got so much on it though.

Do you really need to monitor drive health?

H - I agree, I would love to know how Tinker Tool system 2 did what Cocktail could not. (remember, the owner of the software in question -- extremely smart developer) -- did not know.

Re: Some cache wont clear
Hal Itosis #16151 06/19/11 03:58 AM
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> [...] that (allegedly) nothing else would remove.

As I said, my first inclination was to suggest "applejack AUTO" (but I suspect that would have been futile); either it or SL Cache Cleaner, which I believe also has "deep" cache cleaning functionality, may very well have turned the trick.


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In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Some cache wont clear
artie505 #16155 06/19/11 03:55 PM
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Originally Posted By: artie505
As I said, my first inclination was to suggest "applejack AUTO" (but I suspect that would have been futile); either it or SL Cache Cleaner, which I believe also has "deep" cache cleaning functionality, may very well have turned the trick.

Yep, AppleJack is pretty thorough, and —since it works from single-user mode —it has no competitor when login and/or normal startup is not possible (the only condition being it needs to be installed ahead of time).

Bresnik gives a good description of that particular TTS feature here: The Pane Caches

idunno, all of the apps mentioned in the posts above have various options for cache cleaning... and i'm not sure if “i tried that and it didn't work” tells us the full story.

In the end however, there are only a handful of 'standard' places where caches are supposed to be placed... and i'm not aware of (read: don't believe in) any secret locations which would require any special tricks.

$ sudo -s
Password:
# ls -d /var/folders/*/*/-Caches- {,/System,/Users/*/,/var/root}/Library/Caches
/Library/Caches
/System/Library/Caches
/Users/halito/Library/Caches
/var/folders/Ap/Ap8ZG0DPEpu2FgJTwuRPoU+++TI/-Caches-
/var/folders/zz/zzzivhrRnAmviuee+++++++++++/-Caches-
/var/folders/zz/zzzivhrRnAmviuee++++4U+++-c/-Caches-
/var/folders/zz/zzzivhrRnAmviuee++++EE+++22/-Caches-
/var/folders/zz/zzzivhrRnAmviuee++++KE+++3Y/-Caches-
/var/folders/zz/zzzivhrRnAmviuee++++L++++3k/-Caches-
/var/folders/zz/zzzivhrRnAmviuee++++ME+++42/-Caches-
/var/folders/zz/zzzivhrRnAmviuee++++nE+++Ao/-Caches-
/var/folders/zz/zzzivhrRnAmviuee++++p++++BE/-Caches-


Names may differ slightly below /var/folders, but the blue command should work for all Leo/Snowy machines.

Edit: the ls -d command just lists the names of those folders. To see their content, change -d to -la or something.

Edit 2: changed the above command sequence to grab a root shell first. (shell pattern matching requires it to "see into" other user accounts)

Edit 3: hmm... for completeness, i added /var/root/Library/Caches as well... but it appears "empty" here so far:
Quote:
ls: /var/root/Library/Caches: No such file or directory

--

While that covers what are technically considered cache locations... there are a similar number of "temporary" files which could be dispensed with as well (though one would hope a regular old restart would clear same).

--

Admittedly, searching my own library for 'cache' in folders other than Caches produces way too many results:

find ~/Library -not -path '*/Library/Caches*' -iname '*cache*'

[meaning: some apps don't always put "cache data" where they're supposed to.] And who knows what sort of data which should go into a cache area isn't actually winding up stuffed inside a plist in Preferences?

Last edited by Hal Itosis; 06/19/11 04:55 PM.
Re: Some cache wont clear
kevs #16157 06/19/11 06:51 PM
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Originally Posted By: kevs
"configuring OS X and OS X applications using hidden preference settings to fine tune your use of applications and the OS itself."

What does this mean? never heard of hidden preferences.
There are over 1,000 preferences for OS X and OS X applications such as Finder, Mail, Safari, AddressBook, Disk Utility, and some 28 other Apple and common third party applications that are not accessible through the Preferencee settings in the GUI Because they are not available through the Preferences GUI in the applications they are called hidden preferences. They are not secret because they are available to anyone willing to spend the time to dig through thousands of pages of developeer documentation to ferret them out. The developer's of MacPilot have done this however, and present them in a single application.
Originally Posted By: kevs
So the more expensive system 2 does not have Tinker Tool regular on it?? odd no? Boy, it's got so much on it though.
As I said there is no overlap between TinkerTool and TinkerTool System, but if you have TinkerTool installed on your system — it is after all free — TinkerTool System can import the TinkerTool configuration panes into its GUI.
Originally Posted By: kevs
Do you really need to monitor drive health?
In my experience the most common system failure in Macs or PCs is hard drive failure, and it seems HD failure is becoming more common. Monitoring volume and drive health can provide early warning of impending failure and allow you to take appropriate action to repair volume structure damage, or move the data off of a failing drive before it fails completely and the data is unrecoverable. Just last week DG a;erted a friend his drive was failing and he was able to get his most critical data off of the drive before it failed totally. My experience is the failure rate of hard drives is three to four times that of other hardware components. So I will leave it up to you whether monitoring volume structure and drive health is worthwhile. I think it is.

As a side note, my experience and that of an extensive test by Google Labs is the S.M.A.R.T. values touted by manufacturers and used by all sorts of different utilities is a good indicator that a drive has already failed and you just don't know it yet, but a poor predictor of impending failure. TechTool Pro provides more data on S.M.A.R.T. results than any other utility I am aware of and is therefore better at predicting drive failure than the summary reported by Disk Utility, Diskwarrior, OnyX, and numerous other utilities. The best predictor of impending drive failure is a surface scan which typically takes several hours to complete. Either TechTool Pro or Drive Genius can perform a surface scan, but it is not part of either utility's monitoring utility.
Originally Posted By: kevs
H - I agree, I would love to know how Tinker Tool system 2 did what Cocktail could not. (remember, the owner of the software in question -- extremely smart developer) -- did not know.
Comparing the logs or perhaps the documentation of the various utilities should reveal this answer.


If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein
Re: Some cache wont clear
joemikeb #16160 06/19/11 09:45 PM
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Joe,
thanks.
I"d love to hear of a few real world examples of hidden preferences.
I added Tinkertool regular. It came up at bottom of system pane as user settings for my home folder name.
You recommend Tech Tool Pro over, DG (what DG stand for again?)
I never really liked tech tool, seemed unstrustable when I ran things, but maybe it's better now.
You run it manually one time a month?
If my drive fails I have a clone that gets backup up every night. and one in the bank safe deposit.
Do you still use Dick Warrior? I use to love that, but have not updated with the better performance of drives lately.
Logs: I would have no idea on that... but I now have my copy of Tinker Tool system to solve this issue in the future.

Re: Some cache wont clear
kevs #16161 06/19/11 10:04 PM
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PS Joe, I downloaded Macpilot to take a peek, but don't see where this feature is to see hidden preference. Maybe you have a software everyone knows I could understand it.

Re: Some cache wont clear
kevs #16164 06/19/11 11:18 PM
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To help you with real life preferences, you can make the invisible files visible using some Finder commands, or, easier, with a small utility InVisibles (http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/12194/invisibles).
If you then open your Users/yourname/Library/preferences folder you will see a whole bunch of hidden (invisible) preferences starting with .global.
Just an example.


Alex
3.1 GHz 13" MacBook Pro 2015, 8 GB RAM, OS 10.11.2, Office 2011, TimeWarner Cable
2.8 GHz Xeon Mac Pro 2010, 16 GB RAM, OS 10.11.2, Office 2011, LAN
Re: Some cache wont clear
macnerd10 #16165 06/20/11 12:22 AM
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I know of invisible files, but Joe is talking about hidden preferences. I'd love to see some apps I know and love hidden preference and where macpilot does this.

Re: Some cache wont clear
macnerd10 #16166 06/20/11 12:37 AM
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Quote:
To help you with real life preferences, you can make the invisible files visible using some Finder commands...

I don't think what Joemikeb and kevs are discussing are invisible files; they're discussing hidden preferences—an entirely different matter.

Here's an example. When Leopard was nearing release, a number of developers were unhappy with the 3D Dock, its glossy shelf, and the subtle blue orbs of light indicating running apps. Ultimately, an option to revert to the Tiger-style 2D Dock was included in the final version of 10.5, but without any GUI (Graphical User Interface) means of accomplishing such a reversion.

To revert to the 2D Dock, one has to go to Terminal and enter

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES; killall Dock

[or, in deference to ganbustein's point about the undesirability of using killall in this fashion, one can run the following Applescript script instead:

tell application "Dock" to quit
do shell script "defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES"


which works on my Mac (OS X 10.5.8), though since the Dock, once quit, automatically relaunches, it's conceivable that if the shell script were delayed, the relaunching of the Dock would precede it, thus negating any change.]

And once one has reverted to the 2D Dock, one finds the following entry in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist:

Code:
<key>no-glass</key>
	<true/>


Note that although this "no-glass" key is nowhere to be found if you've never reverted to the 2D Dock—i.e., it's hidden—the file it appears in once you do revert to the 2D Dock has been visible all along.



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Re: Some cache wont clear
dkmarsh #16169 06/20/11 01:10 AM
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Originally Posted By: macnerd10
To help you with real life preferences, you can make the invisible files visible using some Finder commands...

Originally Posted By: kevs
I know of invisible files, but Joe is talking about hidden preferences. I'd love to see some apps I know and love hidden preference and where macpilot does this.

Originally Posted By: dkmarsh
I don't think what Joemikeb and kevs are discussing are invisible files; they're discussing hidden preferences—an entirely different matter.

But ironically enough, enabling invisibles in Finder does involve accessing its hidden pref...

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool TRUE

...so, it's all relative. wink

[edit: actually, no irony perhaps... that's probably exactly what Alex meant to convey.]

Last edited by Hal Itosis; 06/20/11 01:33 AM. Reason: fixed the key: AppleShowAllFiles
Re: Some cache wont clear
Hal Itosis #16175 06/20/11 02:25 AM
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Ok, DK, thanks! that's a pretty arcane app, but I get the idea.
Not sure Macpilot can help with hidden preferences for my apps like Office, Photoshop... but who knows!

Re: Some cache wont clear
dkmarsh #16177 06/20/11 02:34 AM
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Originally Posted By: dkmarsh
[or, in deference to ganbustein's point about the undesirability of using killall in this fashion, one can run the following Applescript script instead:

tell application "Dock" to quit
do shell script "defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES"


which works on my Mac (OS X 10.5.8), though since the Dock, once quit, automatically relaunches, it's conceivable that if the shell script were delayed, the relaunching of the Dock would precede it, thus negating any change.]


The Dock is the one exception to the rule. Since it won't stay quit, quitting it doesn't really help. It may even make things worse, by starting a race between how quickly you can update its prefs and how quickly it can read them.

For the Dock only, you have to just take your chances and use kill (or killall). The only mitigating factor is that Dock needs to update its preferences so rarely, basically only when you drag something in/out of the dock, or drag the dock to a different edge of the screen, that it (apparently) can afford to flush every minute change out to disk immediately. It never has any unsaved changes in RAM, and is never writing anything to disk except while your hand is still on the mouse/trackpad from telling it to do something. (I.e., your hand isn't on the keyboard running a command in Terminal.) Apple knows that there are a kajillion instances of "killall Dock" advice out there on the interwebs, and they've (apparently again) hardened it to survive.

At least I hope so.

Finder, on the other hand, is constantly updating its in-memory copies of .DS_Store data, as you navigate your windows from folder to folder and/or change views and window sizes. To be reasonably efficient, it has to flush those changes to disk only occasionally and at unpredictable times.


Assuming that "killall Dock" is safe, you can use it to tease Dock. (You can make it slightly safer by telling Dock to quit, and then proceeding with the game after it comes back. After it quits normally and restarts, you can be sure its pref files are up-to-date, and killing it should be benign.)

The tease has to do with the genie effect as it sucks a window that you're minimizing into the dock. You can put the genie effect into slow motion by holding down the shift key as you click on the yellow minimize button.

In a Terminal window, type the command killall Dock, but don't press return yet. Be sure the window is in a place you can reach quickly. While holding down the shift key, click on the minimize button of some other window. Then, very quickly, click back in the Terminal window and press return. (Alternatively, keep the Terminal window in front, and minimize some window in the background. That way you don't need to click on the Terminal window. The killall Dock command doesn't need to actually be on screen.)

Try it with the Dock on various edges of the screen. Try interacting with the victim windows. (Keyboard navigation helps.)

As a reminder, some pertinent Dock settings are (usual setting is blue):

defaults write com.apple.Dock mineffect -string genie ; killall Dock
defaults write com.apple.Dock mineffect -string suck ; killall Dock
defaults write com.apple.Dock mineffect -string scale ; killall Dock

defaults write com.apple.Dock orientation -string left ; killall Dock
defaults write com.apple.Dock orientation -string right ; killall Dock

defaults write com.apple.Dock orientation -string bottom ; killall Dock
defaults write com.apple.Dock orientation -string top ; killall Dock

defaults write com.apple.Dock pinning -string end ; killall Dock
defaults write com.apple.Dock pinning -string start ; killall Dock

defaults write com.apple.Dock pinning -string middle ; killall Dock

(Darn! orientation top no longer works, at least as of Snow Leopard, and the effect doesn't work with mineffect scale.)

To get your windows back in shape, minimize them again from the Windows menu.

Last edited by ganbustein; 06/20/11 02:39 AM. Reason: Typos in some of the commands
Re: Some cache wont clear
kevs #16178 06/20/11 03:07 AM
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Originally Posted By: kevs
Not sure Macpilot can help with hidden preferences for my apps like Office, Photoshop... but who knows!

AFAICT MacPilot doesn't list any hidden preferences for MS Office or Photoshop.


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Re: Some cache wont clear
alternaut #16204 06/20/11 04:41 PM
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A, I guessed that, just saying I cant have a good feel of the joy of this feature until it find a hidden pref. for something I know or own.

Re: Some cache wont clear
kevs #16209 06/20/11 06:04 PM
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Check this out. The program Secrets mentioned in the article can help. The article deals with hidden prefs of the applications.
http://www.macworld.com/article/139053/2009/02/safari4prefs.html

Last edited by macnerd10; 06/20/11 06:05 PM.

Alex
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2.8 GHz Xeon Mac Pro 2010, 16 GB RAM, OS 10.11.2, Office 2011, LAN
Re: Some cache wont clear
kevs #16210 06/20/11 06:30 PM
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Originally Posted By: kevs
A, I guessed that, just saying I cant have a good feel of the joy of this feature until it find a hidden pref. for something I know or own.

We've given you examples, for things you know and own. Dock, for example.

In my last post, I listed several preferences for Dock. If you go to System Preferences->Dock, you'll see some but not all of these options; the ones you don't see there are "hidden".

For example, System Preferences will let you set "Minimize windows using:" to "Genie Effect" or to "Scale Effect". The "Suck Effect" isn't listed, so it's a "hidden setting".

If the dock is narrower/shorter than whatever edge of the screen you put it on, it gets centered on that edge. But by setting the hidden preference "pinning" to "start" or "end", you can slide it along that edge to a corner. Center the dock again by setting "pinning" back to its default value of "middle".

Re: Some cache wont clear
kevs #16213 06/20/11 07:09 PM
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Originally Posted By: kevs
PS Joe, I downloaded Macpilot to take a peek, but don't see where this feature is to see hidden preference. Maybe you have a software everyone knows I could understand it.

When you select an app In MacPilot's left-hand pane you see a list of its hidden prefs in MP's right-hand pane.

There is no "feature [...] to see hidden prefs;" every pref that MP displays for any particular app is a hidden pref.

<clip>content removed<clip>

Last edited by joemikeb; 06/20/11 11:39 PM. Reason: content cast aspersions on another person and did not contribute to the troubleshooting thread

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Re: Some cache wont clear
artie505 #16217 06/20/11 09:35 PM
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Ok guys, thanks...

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