Mac Os X Scheduling

MAC OS X SCHEDULING SCHEDULING * Mac OS X uses preemptive scheduling preemptive scheduling – takes place when a process switches from running to ready state and switches from waiting to ready Scheduling Automated Tasks

1. Folder Actions - are scripts which can be "attached" to specific folders. When files a dropped or saved into a folder, their attached actions will run. For ins you can set a folder to automatically upload any file placed into it to certain location. This lets you schedule a task based not on a specific but rather on when files are ready for the task.

al Alarms 's alarm feature can be used to schedule tasks on your Mac, though OS X seems ake no mention of it. You can specify to open a file (or launch an application) as alarm. Using this method, you can schedule any task on your computer, and you all of the versatility built into iCal for scheduling it.

iCal Alarm dialogue box

3. Cron UNIX includes a program named 'cron' to handle the execution of tasks on a specified schedule, regardless of whether the user is logged in or not. Cron does this through a series of simple text files known as 'crontabs' which control the scheduling of jobs.

The system cron tasks are stored in /etc/crontab. You can "cat" this file to get an example of what a crontab looks like: user% cat /etc/crontab # $NetBSD: crontab,v 1.13 1997/10/26 13:36:31 lukem Exp $ # # /etc/crontab - root's crontab # SHELL=/bin/sh PATH=/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin HOME=/var/log #min hour command */10

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mday *

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month *

wday root

user

/usr/libexec/atrun

# do daily/weekly/monthly maintenance 15 3 * * * root sh /etc/daily... 30 4 * * 6 root sh /etc/weekly... 30 5 1 * * root sh /etc/monthly...