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#38 An "auto" that will also check user accounts for pref issues

Some_future_release
open
5
2012-10-09
2005-08-20
Anonymous
No

It would be nice to run an "auto" that will check
system cache and preference files and then do so for
all (or selected) users.

Discussion

  • Kristofer Widholm

    Logged In: YES
    user_id=583959

    Thank you for your feedback. It sounds to me like people
    wish AppleJack were a maintenance tool instead of a
    troubleshooting, critical fix tool. I'll have to think about
    whether it's better for someone else to make that tool, or
    whether I should re-cast it in that mold.

    For now, I think it's appropriate that a computer's
    administrator not be deleting users' cache files, or
    checking their preferences, unless there are problems with
    that user's account which are preventing login. AppleJack is
    a bit of a clumsy mallet and should really only be used when
    there are problems with the system which necessitate its
    use. I don't want to spread the possible reach of its
    clumsiness to users' home directories if I can help
    it--unless specifically desired and needed by the
    administrator.

    If you just want to clean out your caches regularly, you can
    do so with any number of third party tools, or add some
    scripting to your daily.local, weekly.local, or
    monthly.local maintenance scripts. That's what they are
    there for. There's also the excellent Macaroni utility.

    I will leave this request for enhancement posted here for
    comment. Thanks for your feedback.

     
  • Nobody/Anonymous

    Logged In: NO

    if not an auto setting, how about a menu of the users applejack finds. press [1]
    for /users/... etc.

    i'm always fatfingering someone's userid, sometimes multiple times because i'm
    in a hurry. pressing 1 instead of having to type out /Users/firstnamelastname
    for each user of a shared mac to clear up problems would save a lot of time.

     
  • jonathan segel

    jonathan segel - 2006-09-06

    Logged In: YES
    user_id=614745

    at the end of the last school year, i wanted to run
    applejack on all the computers in a digital arts lab. all
    users were by area (music, graphic, etc., 5 different users
    including admin)
    having an auto setting for clearing all users caches,
    checking prefs, etc, would have been extremely efficient!
    i guess this is used as maintenance, but i felt it would be
    good prophylaxis for that many machines...

     
  • Kristofer Widholm

    Logged In: YES
    user_id=583959

    A menu is certainly possible, though will involve some
    complicated scripting. Here's the problem: Not all user
    accounts will exist in /Users/username. Some users might
    exist on a second volume, or on a network volume. So I will
    have to dig in to NetInfo to find all the user's home
    directories, but even that is not foolproof, so in addition,
    I will need to enable the user-entry of a full path to a
    home directory as well as the menu of found users.

     
  • Nobody/Anonymous

    Logged In: NO

    From Leo of BORG [leoofborg@gmail.com]:

    Um.. in addition to all the other comments here, what about
    FileVault??

    Some of us using Applejack here have other tools to check
    users accounts, and anyway STRONGLY encourage users to back up.

    I always considered AJ a CLI tool.. I think it would be
    dangerous to migrate such a tool to a menu item or to give
    it a GUI.

    Just my 2 yen...

    -Leo

     
  • cdenesha

    cdenesha - 2010-11-24

    Thank you for leaving this enhancement request for comment. I just left two comments on other requests that AJ be able to automatically clean all user profiles it can on an automatic basis, but only now see your reasoning.

    What if the administrator gets a report that a user can't sign on but doesn't have the username of the person? Perhaps it is just a note attached to a Mac in a lab or workplace setting? Doing a full clean of as many user profiles it can find on the Mac itself would be a helpful tool for an IT administrator. Keeping it local instead of network builds in a level of safety, and of course there must be a way to identify and ignore FileVault profiles.

    In addition, I guess I would prefer to see AJ as a maintenance tool as well. I use it that way on my Mac once a month, mostly because of the ability to do it in single user mode without having to learn bash scripting.

    thanks for providing an excellent tool,

    chris

     

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