[MacTUG] Computer slow down after upgrading to 10.4

[Richard Crispin]

Hi All
I have noticed that after upgrading my computer at work to use 10.4 
that quite a few times I would get the spinning beach ball for a 
while and then it would go a way. This was really interfering with 
work so I decided to investigate. Eventually, I found this article on 
MacOSXHints.com. I ran the suggested fix and everthing is fine again. 
This has not been a problem on my laptop or my computer at home so I 
don't know why it affect my machine at work. CAUTION: If you are not 
comfortable with using the terminal or don't know what cron, sudo or 
rm are then you should probably not try this yourself.
Richard
------
After upgrading to 10.4, I found that launchd was eating up much CPU 
time (around 15%).

Investigating this strange behavior, I noticed that cron was started 
several times per second! The file com.vix.cron.plist (in /System -> 
Library -> LaunchDaemons) responsible for cron contains this entry:
   <key>QueueDirectories</key>
   <array>
     <string>/var/cron/tabs</string>
   </array>
This causes cron to watch the /var/cron/tabs directory for new 
crontabs, which is a good thing. But in my case, this directory also 
contained a .DS_Store file. The Finder uses this file to store 
various information such as window location, icon position, etc. For 
some reason, launchd choked on this file, even though it was never 
updated. After removing the file with sudo rm -f 
/var/cron/tabs/.DS_Store, I found that launchd behaved as expected, 
and CPU usage was back to normal.

As always, please be extremely careful when using rm -f as root 
(sudo), as you can do much damage to important files and directories 
with just one typo!

-- 
Richard Crispin 
Information Systems Admin   e-mail:rcrispin at watarts.uwaterloo.ca
St. Jerome's University     phone:Days (519)884-8111 ext. 8260
290 Westmount Rd. N         FAX:(519)725-0015
Waterloo, Ont.  N2L 3G3
Canada
---
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his sleep...      ... not screaming and shouting, like his passengers.

"Boot, you transistorized tormentor! Boot!"~Archibald Asparagus, VeggieTales

"Time, heat and pressure. 
   The same things that make a diamond also make a waffle."~Scott Meyer