AppleJack free disk maintenance tool for OSX

Sat Nov 13 15:19:54 2010 EST (-0500 GMT)

AppleJack InstallerIf you use a Mac, and you haven’t had a chance to install it yet, I’d like to recommend AppleJack.

AppleJack is a free open source tool that automates the basic UNIX tools are a few other basic maintenance tasks for OSX. All things someone comfortable with the command line could do themselves, but AppleJack automates the process and more. It’s routine repairs disk contents, repairs permissions, validate the system’s preference files, and gets rid of possibly corrupted cache files.

In my experience AppleJack is as good or better than commercial OSX maintenance tools and makes the most of the proven command line disk maintenance tools that come with almost all UNIX operating systems.

Once you have visited applejack.sourceforge.net and downloaded and installed AppleJack it is ready to be run. To run it restart in Single User Mode (SUM), by holding down Command + S keys at startup, and then when prompted type applejack, or applejack auto (which will run through all the tasks automatically), or applejack auto restart (which will also restart the computer automatically at the end of the process).

AppleJack running on MacBookOne of my favourite features of AppleJack is that it lets you issue commands like applejack auto shutdown to have it run through its whole routine and shutdown the computer when it’s done. A great task to run at the end of the day, and it looks really hacker-cool when its running.

I run AppleJack every once and a while, or when something goes wrong for un-explained reasons. Occasionally it catches problems and alerts me, but mostly I feel the benefits of good computer hygiene.

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