Files! Files! Files!

Come on in! We got room!

Get It Try It

OK, so we start this adventure by preparing for a hard boot. We're going to remove reams of caches from everywhere.

And on reboot we'll go into SUM and finish the job. We'll get at ~/Library/Containers and /private/var. We'll try to clean out the most. On this elegantly simple and simply elegant Unix system.

Remember when Dave Cutler, who loved the C programming language, repeatedly said he detested Unix because it was the 'product of a committee of PhDs'?

Dave was wrong about that: Unix was the product of 'ken' and 'dmr', with able advice from many, but it wasn't the product of a committee of PhDs.

But Apple's Unix is. And you can see and feel the difference.

Further, odds are good that the ones at Apple aren't PhDs and may not even be aware of each other. After all, Apple's desktop OS was, until recently, relegated to the role of Dog at Dinner Table, eagerly awaiting the not-always tasty morsels tossed its way.

Now, suddenly, there's a flurry of desperate (some would say chaotic) activity.

Anyway. Here we go. Fire up CLIX and do a preliminary run at cleaning up ULAT.



Now into Xfile as root.

√ Clean out ~/Library/Containers. Just clean it out.

√ Next: into /var/db. Try again to clear ULAT.

√ Clear out all user-specific under /var/folders.

√ And that makes things about ready for boot.

[Boot. SUM. Clean a bit more. Reboot.]

And we're back up!

So let's start with enumerating the entire system. (And yes, they're still sloppy over there at Apple.)

objc[413]:
Class FIFinderSyncExtensionHost is implemented in both
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/FinderKit.framework/Versions/A/FinderKit
(0x7fffaa5c73d8) and
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/FileProvider.framework/OverrideBundles/
FinderSyncCollaborationFileProviderOverride.bundle/Contents/MacOS/
FinderSyncCollaborationFileProviderOverride
(0x10fc8cf50).
One of the two will be used. Which one is undefined.

And don't forget that this listing includes the radioactive monster known as XCODE... But even so, OK?



(Yes, most of those files are for iPony... but you knew that, right?)

DerivedData - does anyone ever look at that junk? 295 megabytes of... junk?



And iOS Device Logs? We don't have iOS on this device!

Ah. Xscan is complete. 1,058,149 items.: Our cosy little Apple Unix system. Bare bones. Nothing but dev tools here for the most part. Cleansed and scoured both before boot and in SUM before reboot. 1,058,149 items. No chaos here.

OK let's move on. /var/folders and the system-specific subdir. 3394 items. Sweet. (The user-specific subdir has only 515 items so far. Knock on ][. But that's already over 80 MB of junk - don't knock too hard. And some of it even has extended attributes. Fab.



OK, moving onto ~/Library/Containers.



Wait a minute! 743 items? This was cleaned out both before boot and in SUM! What's going on?

Remember when Steve Jobs wanted to shave three seconds off the boot time for the Mac?

Back to the ULAT. diagnostics is back to 4 MB on boot. (Who uses ULAT?)



systemstats is up to 11 MB.



uuidtext has 115 MB already. 1208 items. On a cold boot after double-cleansing. 1208 items.

SSD technology, where disk free space is always cheap.



OK let's recap.

/var/db
2984 items. 2,332,389,543 bytes, four and a half million blocks, 6 KB in extended attributes, in areas mostly unseen.

/var/folders
4453 items. 85 MB.

~/Library/Containers
743 items. 958,773 bytes. Only 414 bytes in XAs.

~/Library
7046 items. 852,951,373 bytes. One million seven hundred thousand blocks. 6 KB in XAs.

What do things look like on ordinary user machines? One simply doesn't want to know. Anyone asking for an SSD upgrade because they ran out of space?

The original IBM PC/XT had a 10 MB Seagate ST-412 hard drive.

Ordinary users could fill those hard drives, but it would have taken a long time. The IT pros in the day would never have filled them.

You've obviously heard of us, otherwise you wouldn't be here.
We're known for telling the truth even if it's not in our interest.
We're now telling you to beware Apple's walled garden. Don't get locked in.
What you've seen so far may be only the beginning of something far far worse.
Download our Test Drive and at least check out our free Keymaster Solo.
That's the first step to regaining your freedom. See here.