MacOS X uptime

[macubergeek]

I've recently fixed a modem/gui freezeup problem and haven't had to reboot since..more than 13 days now....Does anyone know what the uptime record for MacOS X consumer is? How about MacOS Server?

[rusto]

I don't know if there is any way to "officially" determine that...but I'm sure people will exagerate the same way some do about certain of their body parts. :)

22 days is my longest stretch without a reboot/crash.

[macubergeek]

interesting....
since going to 10.1.3 I've only had one kernel panic when I hit "restart" at a login window. I suspect the login window program....whatever it is has a small bug. Other than that I've not had a single kernel panic since running on 10.0 something. So far:
jamesk @ /Users/jamesk@HOME-->date
Thu Mar 14 09:14:19 EST 2002
jamesk @ /Users/jamesk@HOME-->uptime
9:14AM up 13 days, 17:19, 7 users, load averages: 1.01, 0.63, 0.46


race ya :D

[Phil St. Romain]

I recall some on Macfixit forums talking about six weeks uptime, and that was on 10.0.4.

I leave my iMac on 24/7. KeepItUp-X restarts every Friday night, but that's probably not necessary.

No kernal panics here ever--just a few restarts when things got sluggish after application installations and a few memory-leaking apps I was checking out.

[abesapiens]

Ha! I made a franken-server out of a PowerMac 8500* that does dns and apache under OS X 10.1 and Eudora Mail Server under Classic. It has been sitting over on my friend's dsl line for the last 101 days without requiring a single reboot or power reset.

*using UnsupportedInstallerX(sp?)

Cheers!

[Reddog]

I once had my iBook 500 up for 39 days under OS X until the 10.1.3 update forced a reboot (it runs SETI continously).

Pat

[macubergeek]

took it this morning 3/16:
7:53AM up 15 days, 15:58, 7 users, load averages: 0.75, 0.41, 0.37

[ephelan]

Do you guys put the thing to sleep during these marathon "on" times or just let it run?

[macubergeek]

I generally don't put it to sleep, because I usually leave it connected to the internet on my dialup. I leave Mail.app running checking my mail every minute to keep my internet connection live. I like to ssh onto the box from work and download and install remotely. But then I'm a geek :D

[Reddog]

Continuously, it's running SETI! (100% processor load). It only sleeps when I move it around.

Paat

[spodie]

Well, since installing Mac OS X.I.III, I've had to restart exactly once. I don't recall how long ago that was, but it's been a really long time.

I have a Quadra 650 running Mac OS 7.6.1 and IPNetRouter. It runs continuously and has not been restarted in more than a year. I still contend that 7.6.1 was the best and most stable OS Apple ever put out up to Mac OS X. I doubt I will be rebooting the Quadra anytime soon.

[JayBee]

I don't recall how long ago that was, but it's been a really long time

Open the Terminal, type

uptime

at the prompt, and you'll know exactly how long ;)

[ephelan]

For purposes of the nightly maintenance that OS X performs on itself, does it make a difference if you leave the Mac in the on or in the sleep position? I put my iBook to sleep nightly and wonder if the maintenance is being performed.

TIA for an answer and all the best.
E

[xchanyazy]

Nope, cron can't run if your computer is sleep.

[ephelan]

Drat, and all this time…

Thanks, I'll leave the machine running with screensaver from now on.

All the best.
E

[Marcwic]

10 Days without a sleep or restart. My iMac hs no fan so leaving on at night doesn't keep me awake.

[Marcwic]

Originally posted by xchanyazy
Nope, cron can't run if your computer is sleep.

What's the option for waking it for maintenance for then? :confused:

[sonderpa]

If you put your Mac to sleep at night or switch off, you can perform the nightly maintenance manually by using MacJanitor (freeware) :cool: .
http://personalpages.tds.net/~brian_hill/macjanitor.html

[WillyT]

I have had problems lately with fink and gtk+ and it blew out my clock. So I think this may be the time from the epoh:

. . .
crash (04:44)
14:59 (11755+20:49)
crash (1+00:34)
09:42 (3+00:51)
crash (2+17:42)
. . .

thats days + hh:mm

I'm not cheating but my clock is.:D

Seriously 36 days is my best.

[ArtemisG3]

I haven't restarted since I installed the serial kext patch to fix the PPP freeze-up.

9:01PM up 35 days, 2:18, 6 users, load averages: 1.57, 1.61, 1.54

G3/300 All-in-one
OS X(10.1.3)

[DSHwrd]

Wow, I must have some sort of 'Non-Uptime' record or something.

I've done several tests and nothing is exclusive. At first I thought that my problem might be with being on the internet, but I stayed off the internet for about a week (Phone line got cut off… happens if you don’t pay the bill. :} ), and It still crashed at least once a day. My second guess would be that it is some sort of combination between the Developer Tools and my specific computer. Not just IB or PB but also REALbasic. I’ll have to do some more exclusive testing on those.

Right now, my record for the longest uptime is literally 30 something hours. Then I got a Kernel panic the next day…

Sheesh!

I’m thinking about doing a fresh install of the system, but don’t know what that will help.

[Marcwic]

i only ever get kernel panicks when using my USB floppy..!@!

[DSHwrd]

ROTFL!

Right after I got done posting the previous message, my computer when into the infamous 'Spinning ball of death' stage. I'm going to attempt to explain what happens to my computer, to see if anyone else has had this problem and knows how to fix it.

Any application I'm in, I'll do something, doesn't have to be anything in particular just clicking a button starts it sometimes, the spinning ball of death appears. Well, no fear! I can Force-Quit! So I click on the finder(I go to the finder so that I can actually click on the apple menu) and go to the Apple Menu and then bring my mouse down to click on the 'Force-Quit' menu, and bam! I'm hit with the spinning ball of death in the finder. Then no matter what application I leap to, or force-quit(With command-option-esc), the computer is no longer useable. The spinning beachball never goes away, I let it sit there for an hour once and I'm not willing to let it sit longer than that. So I just restart.

This last crash happened when I double-clicked inside the title bar, to windowshade the window. So I turned off WindowShade X, and I'll see how that does.

Please let me know if anyone else has had this experience, and what you did to fix it, if it's possible.

Thanks,

[Marcwic]

try pressing APPLE + OPTION + ESCAPE (the classiic force quit command too) instead of going to finder.

[DSHwrd]

Hey Marcwic,

Maybe I should have expanded on that a little more. It doesn't only happen when I go to the finder and then the apple menu, I can command-option-esc, and force-quit the application, but then all the other applications go Hay-Wire too.

Thanks,

[Marcwic]

hmmm.... i would reinstall.. is it possible to reinstall into a different system folder like with OS 9? (and with windows)


Originally posted by DSHwrd
Hey Marcwic,

Maybe I should have expanded on that a little more. It doesn't only happen when I go to the finder and then the apple menu, I can command-option-esc, and force-quit the application, but then all the other applications go Hay-Wire too.

Thanks,

[jeffo]

the longest uptime i have had on my imac i belive was about 20 days and the only reason i restarted was for system updates and changes i was making to the system and such. i have had my ibook up and running for about 14 days and i take it with me to work everyday too.

as far as someone in an earlier message said that they have stopped putting the system to sleep and just use the screen saver instead, it seems from what i have experienced the screen saver claims alot of ram over time and does not seem to purge the memory when it is woken up. i stopped using the screen saver and just have my imac set to turn off the screen after an hour and i occasionally still use the screen saver at work so if i forget to log out and walk away there is still some security there.

jeffo

[ephelan]

Jeffo: it was my post to which you referred earlier. I have since discussed this cron thing with the geniuses (geniui?) at the Salem, NH and the Farmington, CT Apple stores and they seem singularly unimpressed with people who leave their computers running for any length of time beyond that necessary to complete a day's work. They recommend shutting down at the end of the day; they recommend exercising the sleep option between sessions.

I no longer run the screen saver overnight; rather, I either shut down or put my 600 iBook (runnning OS X.1.4 exclusively) to sleep. I also rely upon Mac Janitor which, according to the aforesaid, "seems to do no harm" or words to that effect.

Waiting in Maine for a definitive word from someone on this entire business; I suppose one could leave their machine running, like an electric bulb, until the thing burns out…

All the best.
E

[macubergeek]

Shutting down a laptop or sleeping it makes sense...I mean its a mobile computer after all.
Shutting down a desktop computer, at least one running unix dosn't. First of all every time you startup a cold computer you send a powersurge through the circuitry. Over time this wears it out. Computers consume less engergy per hour of operation if you run them continuously. Yes sleep them if you want to get your hard drive to last longer. But Unix likes to run continuously. It was designed as a server os, running the internet.

Lastly uptime is a geek measure of stability. It's not the only measure but its a good one.

Anyway it's a free country, do what you want.:D

[jeffo]

I am constantly in front of a computer, not always a mac, unfotunately, but with the amount i use them i find it amazingly annoying to wait to have them boot all the time. I also have a computer that has been runninig none stop with the exception of twice it was shutdown for a couple of weeks, but it was/is running for 5 years now. I have had zero troubles with burning out stuff on the computer. I have only had 2 drives go bad on me, and a monitor and nothing else. the one drive went bad about 9 or 10 months ago now and it was an 80 meg, yes meg drive if that gives you an idea of the age of it. it was the boot drive in my os 8.x dns server. it was a quantum drive. i had a 40gig drive go bad on me at almost the same time, but that drive was only 3 months old at the time. it was a western digital drive and i had a replacement drive for free 4 days later in my hands. they were awesome.

jeffo

[macubergeek]

jeffo supports what I've been saying...so long as a computer is properly ventilated and not otherwise overheated...it should continue to run without need of a daily "boot" or "reboot".

Unix particularly likes to run all the time. As another example...we have a Sun enterprise server at work that's only been rebooted twice in 5 years and then only to replace a burned out hard drive.

[ephelan]

Getting back to my laptop (iBook), the last couple of posts seem compelling, especially for desktops. I, too, dislike the wait on startup and have compromised by leaving the "book" on some nights, putting it to sleep some nights and shutting down a couple of times a week. I also run Mac Janitor. For the most part, I am using the "book" as a desktop. That said, it's still my experience that the people in the Apple stores don't seem to subscribe to the practice of letting the computers (any of them) run all the time.

Thanks for the input, the responses; all the best.
E

[mervTormel]

Originally posted by ephelan
...the people in the Apple stores don't seem to subscribe to the practice of letting the computers (any of them) run all the time.

well, you have to ask, "what is the 'mudshark' in their mythology?" and there is a lot of mythology that we are endeared to.

if you are referring to the employees at an apple store, they have just as much mythology as the next hob-goblin. even the geniuses.

[ObFact] i believe it is a practice of the apple stores to deploy a new baseline to every machine every nite, and reboot. this minimizes wonky behavior resulting from the day before when the 'comic book guy' fiddled with netinfo manager and brain-damaged a box. bad example, but my point is, they refresh their hosts daily, and for good reason.

that said, industrial strength unixen are run around the clock for years on end, events willing. properly configured, they run their services and little is tinkered with. they become a faily static machine.

OSX is a new beast, and has not garnered an official UNIX status, yet. it has flaws. i've bashed mine up pretty good fiddling with configs and had to reinstall and/or reboot on a number of occasions. that's acceptable. that's what it's for, to me. a tool that i want to learn and tinker on. it's not a production mode rig. no services are dependent on it being 'up'.

but, if you're running robust apps and not tinkering with configs a lot, there's no need to shutdown/reboot unless there are un-remedial problems.

[repro]

Mac OSX Server 93 days, although not unusual

[macubergeek]

Ordinarily, severs are static machines like Merv implies....Your job would be one of managing computer resources on an ongoing basis. Use of memory, swapspace, drive space, depending upon what job the server is doing. Typically though I've never had to reboot a server. If wwwd goes wonky I'd just restart the service. Unix is modular. You manage the pieces and how they lay claim to the overall system resources. The only cases where I've rebooted a server is when I'd hard code the interfaces at say 100/full duplex (solaris and cisco switches don't always autonegociate nicely) and then it's only to make sure that the interfaces come up properly on reboot.

Merv I'd have to take a minor exception though, macos X is really Aqua (which is new) ontop of NextStep/BSD which isn't. While I'd say it's safe to say that it's not quite quite up to date at the point where Next was bought by Apple and they lost a little time macifying it....I'd say it was pretty close to FreeBSD.

I'd say once we have journaling filesystem and the trusted Darwin project takes off, Macos X will be right up there with the big boys;-)

I think for now though Apple needs to optimize Aqua.

[jmeador]

I only re-boot my ftp server as required by apple software updates. Current uptime - 16 days (booted for 10.1.4 update)

[steveo]

How do you guys keep your RAM up? I have an iBook with 384 megs of RAM. I do a lot of graphic stuff, ie Photoshop 7, Flash MX, and the like. I restart ONLY to free ram up. OS X has NEVER crashed on me. I've never recieved a kernal panic or anything.

Is there a better way to free up RAM? Is it bad to start/restart my ibook every other day or so? Is there an eaiser way?

[WillyT]

steveo

Install another drive?!? and use it for a swap partition or add another 512M of memory or do the shutdown thing.

Best to logout first.
Then login >console (hint: select other)
The console will ask for your name and password. Use your admin acount.
%sudo shutdown now
This will put you in single-user mode. Here you can do your
fsck -y
command to cleanup your hard drive errors.
If it comes back REBOOT NOW then type reboot (you win some you lose some)
If it says file system was modified then fsck -y again.
When fsck comes back ok type
exit
and the system will come back up to multi-user mode and give you the login screen.
If all goes well you won't lose any uptime.

Willy
I AM NOT HAVING ANY LUCK WITH THIS IN 10.2. Something isn't getting logged out correctly and I get stuck in an endless error loop with loginwindow. (RESET BUTTON seems the only exit)

[laurencewilks]

Try this!

Go to System Preferences, click on Screen Effects, select ShowOff, enjoy!