10.4: Reschedule periodic maintenance tasks

May 03, '05 09:13:00AM

Contributed by: Ganesha

Tiger only hintMac OS X 10.4 has as changed the method by which the periodic system tasks periodic (daily, weekly, and monthly) are called. You can no longer change their execution time by modifying the system crontab. If you wish to change the times these tasks run, you will have to make changes to the following files. All live in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons, and each is named:

Since these files are owned by root, the easiest way to change them is with sudo and your favorite command line text editor:
sudo pico System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.periodic-daily.plist
The relevant parts to change are:
<key>Hour</key>
<integer>3</integer>
<key>Minute</key>
<integer>15</integer>
Change these values to whatever you'd like.

[robg adds: Using sudo, I'd also recommend a backup of the files before you start, just in case...]

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