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bayswater wrote:...all of a sudden, over a few seconds, the drive filled up with swap files...

Where did you locate these swap files?

I am interested in this phenomenon because I used to have an issue with Tiger on my G5 where certain applications would cause my system drive to fill up and the only way I could get my disk space back was to restart the computer. Not sure if the issue was with swap files or not, but I could never find the offending files and I would be interested in knowing where to look if that ever happens again.

zed wrote:While "pristine" sounds good, I'm not convinced that a system has to be *that* clean in order to attain most of these Snow Leopard improvements.

But I don't really know what's going on under the hood...

I agree that you don't have to start over and polish every bit to make Snow Leopard stable and able. Just a few precautions to take. First, I do check my disks from another bootable volume, so that I can actually repair the disk AND permissions. I repair permissions after major installs, too. And I make sure I've got everything backed up in Time Machine -- which is a miraculous backup app like nothing else I've ever seen.

Now... about what's going on under the hood. Six-String Geek gave me this link a day or two ago, and this is required reading!

Ars Technica: John Siracusa's OCD (extremely detailed) review of Snow Leopard. (23 linked webpages full of hyperlinks, screenshots, background context, and all you could probably find anywhere on the subject at this point in time. Not too many years ago I was sick of John's whining about interface designs in OSX. He can get locked into a single detail and write pages on the subject... er... like someone else I ...uh... "know." But now I'm thankful for his self-professed OCD, and the tendency to flesh out every detail of Snow Leopard. He's not whining much this time, by the way. By anyone's measure, Snow Leopard is hard not to like once you've learned what's really inside there! It's a long read, but I guarantee you'll find things relevant to what you want to know about SL and your apps and files.

Shooshie

zed wrote:

bayswater wrote:...all of a sudden, over a few seconds, the drive filled up with swap files...

Where did you locate these swap files?

I am interested in this phenomenon because I used to have an issue with Tiger on my G5 where certain applications would cause my system drive to fill up and the only way I could get my disk space back was to restart the computer. Not sure if the issue was with swap files or not, but I could never find the offending files and I would be interested in knowing where to look if that ever happens again.

There are hidden system related folders at the root directory of your startup drive, and the swap files are there. An easy way to locate them is with the app Grandperspective. It will load a drive, folder, whatever, and show you a graphical map of the contents. The largest items you see are likely to be swap files and sleep files. If you "mouse over" them, the exact location is provided.

To see the hidden files, and delete them in the finder you can use the commands below. But be careful fooling around with this stuff. I've never had a problem deleting a swap file, and then immediately restarting, but I don't really know what risks there might be.

BTW, looking at the logs, I suspect DivX for Mac is the culprit in my case. A host of error messages about swap files occurred immediately after I tried to update this app. It did not indicate that it is SL compatible, but was more recent than the version I had.
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Open Terminal and copy/paste:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE; killall Finder

This allows all hidden files to be visible in Finder. You can delete them using the normal GUI way, then copy/paste:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE; killall Finder

This will get you back to normal.

I can feel myself moving towards the cliff. Ahhhh.... I was so prepared not to do this. Who has recorded a new project with new audio or opened some large existing projects?
Why so many recomendations on the install...
time machine back up
Reinstall every thing
Clone drives
partition...

I did a clone of 10.5.8 with DP 5.13

Then installed SL and after that DP 6

Proceeded to open 2 monster film trailer projects and did extensive work using all my plugs and waves stuff.

No problems.

Waves L3 takes forever to load, but works fine.

waxman wrote: Clone drives
partition...

Waxie, this is just good computer practice on ANY major update. Simple as that. While everything should work fine with your SL install, wouldn't you prefer to have a fallback if issues do arise? I've spent hours getting my system in order, and see no reason to forgo the insurance a system clone or disc image offers.

Partitioning is just a way to manage your system resources that offers greater flexibility, because you can re-format partitions without erasing the entire drive.

Have a nice "fall" off the SL cliff... just keep the back up parachute handy, in case you land on hardpack, not powder.

waxman wrote:I can feel myself moving towards the cliff. Ahhhh.... I was so prepared not to do this. Who has recorded a new project with new audio or opened some large existing projects?
Why so many recomendations on the install...
time machine back up
Reinstall every thing
Clone drives
partition...

Yes, and it's slippery one with 5.13. I just can't do snow or 6.02,3,4 whatever until they put back the slide out tray and allow me to select individual windows instantly without moving ANY of my current windows or selecting sets of windows. This is a speed killer for me regardless of what's in snow and I really can't tolerate workarounds at my age.