Mike Salsbury’s Blog

The lookupd process is a component of Mac OS X which allows programs
running on the system to request information about other users and
computers on the network.  This process uses an in-memory cache to
store information about recent activity.  This cache can become
outdated, inaccurate, or incomplete as a result of changes on the
network, or through bugs in lookupd.  To correct some kinds of
network problems, it is helpful for troubleshooting purposes to clear
out or “flush” the lookupd cache.

The script below
attempts to flush the lookupd cache, then kill the relevant
processes.  Those processes will be automatically restarted by OS X
after they’re killed.

As with all my scripts, while I’ve tested
this on a number of Mac OS X 10.3.x systems and it appears to work as
designed, I provide it “as is” without warranty or
support.  If you choose to use it, you assume all responsibility
and liability for whatever happens (good or bad).

This script can
be run from the command line or a cron task.

Read more…

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As part of its normal operation, OS X creates a number of cache files
that allow it to speed up its operations.  Like any files, these
cache files can become corrupted, fragmented, or otherwise
damaged.  This can cause the system to slow down, crash, or behave
erratically.

To prevent such problems, I developed the following
script to delete the system cache files on the computer each night and
force a reboot to maintain the system’s integrity (since deleting a
cache file the OS is using would be “a bad
thing”).

While I’ve tested this script on Mac OS X 10.3.x and
10.4 and believe that it functions as designed, I can’t promise that it
will work on earlier or later OS X releases and provide no warranty or
support.  As with all my scripts, this one is provided “as
is”.  If you are able to make use of it and derive value from
it, great!  If not, you assume all responsibility and liability for
what happens to your system if you choose to use or modify this
script.

This script can be executed from the command line or via a
cron task.

Read more…

admin Mac Support cache, clean, clear, delete, files, Mac, OS, remove, reset, script, system, wipe, X

As part of its normal operation, Mac OS X creates “font
cache” files that help it to speed up the display of fonts on the
screen.  Unfortunately, as with many types of cache files, OS X
font cache files can become corrupted or damaged.  When this
happens, strange font display problems, application crashes, or system
crashes may occur.  It’s a good idea to periodically delete the
font cache files, which OS X will dutifully rebuild on the next reboot
with clean non-corrupted copies.

Font cache files are stored in
“/System/Library/Caches” in a variety of files with different
names.  Those names all follow specific patterns, so we can easily
build a script to look for files with those names and delete them
automatically.

This script has been tested and to the best of my
knowledge appears to work on OS X 10.3.x and 10.4.  It may or may
not work with earlier or later versions of OS X.  As with all my
scripts, I provide it “as is” without warranty or support of
any kind.  If you choose to try this script, you accept all
responsibility for any damage it does to your computer or
data.

This script can be executed from the command line or a cron
task.

Read more…

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