In OSs previous to 10.6, running the Weekly maintenance script took several minutes. In 10.6, by contrast, it only takes a few seconds. (The Daily and Monthly scripts still take just a few seconds.) Any ideas as to why this has changed?
No idea and no Snow.
But here are some commands we can use to compare (i have Leo Jr.):
This command lists the (weekly) scripts that get run:
ls -l /etc/periodic/weekly
total 24
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 635 Sep 28 2007 310.locate
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 1007 Sep 28 2007 320.whatis
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 620 Sep 28 2007 999.local
This command lists (all) the output files:
ls -lhrtT /var/{log/*.out,db/locate*}
-r--r--r-- 1 nobody wheel 8.0M Nov 28 03:24:52 2009 /var/db/locate.database
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 1.6K Nov 28 03:25:11 2009 /var/log/weekly.out
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 421B Dec 1 05:30:00 2009 /var/log/monthly.out
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 35K Dec 2 03:15:03 2009 /var/log/daily.out
This (simplified) command looks at the last output (more-or-less):
tail /var/log/weekly.out
Sat Nov 28 03:15:00 EST 2009
Rebuilding locate database:
Rebuilding whatis database:
makewhatis: /usr/share/man//usr/share/man:/usr/X11/man: No such file or directory
makewhatis: /usr/X11/man//usr/share/man:/usr/X11/man: No such file or directory
-- End of weekly output --
E.g., does the 1st command produce 3 scripts of comparable sizes?
        does the 2nd command produce 4 files of comparable sizes?
        does the 3rd command produce anything?
Depending on the above results, more commands could explore the matter further.
