Cocktail 3.7 (#2): Confusion over output of log files

We previously reported that, for some users, Cocktail 3.7 apparently fails to run the Mac OS X standard weekly and monthly maintenance scripts, despite being set to do so.

It now appears that Cocktail is running the scripts, but is outputting the log information to a non-standard location.

Kristofer Szymanski, the author of Cocktail, explains:

"Cocktail is properly running all three cron scripts. However, if you run cron scripts using Cocktail, the output is redirected to other log files (located in /Library/Application Support/Cocktail/ - you can view these logs by choosing Outputs from the Window menu) and the log files (.out) in var/log/ are not modified."

Again, you can verify whether or not the scripts have run by launching the Terminal (located in Applications/Utilities) and entering the command:

• ls -al /var/log/*.out

where you will see the following if the scripts did not run:

• -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 22378 Jan 12 03:15 /var/log/daily.out

and the following if the scripts did run:

• -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 112831 Feb 1 10:38 /var/log/daily.out
• -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 938 Feb 1 20:01 /var/log/monthly.out
• -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 2800 Feb 1 20:07 /var/log/weekly.out

Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.

Previous coverage:

• Cocktail 3.7 not running weekly and monthly scripts under Mac OS X 10.4.3 and 10.4.4

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