Adapting the Maintenance CD to your Environment

Introduction

Discusses how to modify the maintenance CD to fit your needs.

Important notes about the CD

The CD image (saved as a Toast 5 disc image) along with all of the scripts and components are available in a Disk Copy image on the Mac Mgr Server. Note that this server is only available to Mac Managers on the University of Utah campus. Contact us if you don't know how to access the server.

The simplest way to make changes to the Maintenance CD image is to copy the Toast CD image onto your Hard Disk, then use Toast 5 to mount the CD image. The image it mounts is a read/write image, so you can edit the scripts, add or remove utilities, then just click burn. Remember that if you leave any windows from the mounted image open, the burned CD will have those windows open by default.

Before you edit any of the scripts, it is VERY important that you copy the included scripting additions into your own System Folder. If you don't, Script Editor will insert garbage in place of the commands that these scripting additions add, which may render your copy of the script useless. The scripting additions are available for download on the Mac Mgr Server, or you can copy them from the Scripting Additions folder on the CD image itself.

The CD image has Mac OS 9.2.1 installed, which means it might not work (I haven't tested it ) on non-G3 Macs. OS 9.2.1 works with all of the current Apple models (i.e. QuickSilver G4's), and since we no longer support any non-G3 Macs, we have no reason to have a 9.1 image. However, if there is enough interest on campus for a Mac OS 9.1 version of the CD, contact us and we will consider making a 9.1 version available.

IMPORTANT: Some of the applications on the Maintenance CD image are commercial products (Diskwarrior, Appearance OSAX, etc.) that our department has purchased, so technically you must own your own copy of these products to rightfully use them. See the following link or read the Readme included with the CD image for more information about purchasing Diskwarrior.

http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/index.html

What the CD does

When you insert the CD and double-click the "Set Startup to CD/Restart" alias on the desktop, it sets the Startup Disk to the Maintenance CD, saves the name of the original Startup Disk in a text file on the desktop, then restarts the computer.

On startup, you get a dialog box asking "Do you want to run routine maintenance?" You have thirty seconds to respond, after which it automatically begins maintenance:

• It gets a list of all local, non-ejectable disks (this list is later used by Diskwarrior and Trash Desktop).
• It resets the original startup disk (based on the text file on the desktop).
• It runs Drive Setup 2.0.7 to update the HD drivers, Diskwarrior 2.0 to rebuild the disk directories, and Trash Desktop 1.2.1 to delete the desktop files.
• It copies a script called "Eject CD/Run RevR after startup" (which ejects the Maintenance CD and opens our existing "Run RevRdist" script - see "Things you might want/need to change" for more info about this) into the startup items of the original startup disk.
• If nothing goes wrong, it then restarts the computer.
• On startup, the desktop is rebuilt, the CD ejects, and the computer runs RevRdist.

Things you'll want/need to change

We have a script called "Run RevRdist" at the root of our System Folder, and the "Eject CD/Run RevR after startup" script simply launches this script (after ejecting the Maintenance CD). If your machines do not have this script in the System Folder, you'll want to modify the "Eject CD/Run RevR after startup" script to point to your own "run RevR" script or RevR prefs. If you do not want to run RevR on your machines at all, replace the "Eject CD/Run RevR after Startup" script with the "Eject Maintenance CD" script included on the Mac Mgr Server, and edit the "Run Maintenance" script accordingly (more info on the way!).

If you want to change which utilities the script runs, you'll need to edit and recompile the "Run maintenance" script. Towards the top of the script there is a section which sets true/false variables for each utility - if you want a utility to run, set its variable to "true";if you don't want it to run, set its variable to "false". For example:

set updateHardDiskDriver to true
set runPlusOptimizer to false

I would not recommend renaming the scripts, script variables, or the Maintenance CD itself unless you want to go through the scripts and update all occurrences of the CD name, variables, and script names. It can be done, but it's much simpler not to.

If you have problems with the script or CD image that you cannot solve by reading the included readme's or by using available web resources, contact me with a thorough explanation of your problem. Please remember that this is a voluntary project that we came up with, so don't expect great tech support!!