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.
 3. Cron
iCal Alarm dialogue box
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 mday month wday user

command

*/10 * * * * root /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...