Forums | MacLife

The computer is not idling, so why is it going to sleep? Does idling mean no direct user input, or does it mean anything the computer might be doing? If it is the latter, then why would it sleep?

Idle means no user input.  Your computer's CPU is probably never 100% idle.

I would recommend setting your Energy Saver System Preference like this (it works for me, command-line SETI, and my 500MHz G3 iMac):

(quoted for better definition from the background)

That is how I have my Energy Saver set up right now.

I don't need my HD to be shut off, but thanks for the Mac OS X RAM disk link.



Here is what I would like to do:

Before I had this problem, I would set the sleep timer to 30 minutes. The computer would not sleep until it has finished whatever it was doing, in this case, SETI@Home.

SETI@Home would run overnight and the next morning I would see one of two things:
1) If it was a new (5% and under) or early-progress work unit (around 20%), I would find it to be 50% or higher complete.
2) If the work unit was well underway (50% or higher), then it would be complete and the computer would have gone to sleep half an hour after it was finished.

This does not happen anymore either because of the recent security fix, or maybe because of something else.

This is what happens now: Even though the computer was not finished doing the SETI work unit, it would go to sleep 30 minutes later.

Is there a way to prevent this other than having the computer stay on the rest of the night (meaning using the Never Sleep setting)? I don't want it to be working only 3 hours and the rest of the night just stay on doing nothing.