What is Repair Permissions?

[FriarCrazy]

There have been many mentions of "Repairing Permissions" on the OSX 10.3.5 thread. I decided to go ahead and do it, and I got a whole list of things that got "repaired." I understand how Permissions on a UNIX filesystem work, does that have anything to do with repairing permissions? Why does it get messed up in the first place? Can someone please explain to me what this is all about?

[varmit]

There have been many mentions of "Repairing Permissions" on the OSX 10.3.5 thread. I decided to go ahead and do it, and I got a whole list of things that got "repaired." I understand how Permissions on a UNIX filesystem work, does that have anything to do with repairing permissions? Why does it get messed up in the first place? Can someone please explain to me what this is all about?

Its repairing the unix permissions, thus the rw-rw-r type things, thats unix language for permissions. When installing, it might install the new program parts using permissions that were giving by the programmer that did the bug fixing. So it needs to make the permissions correct for your Mac and your user, not the Apple programmers. This is just an educated guess.

[FriarCrazy]

Thanks very much Varmit :)

[friarbayliff]

That sounds pretty accurate to me. Over time the permissions of various files on your system might be changed or randomly modified for whatever reasons the operating system or other programs have to do such things. Perhaps they don't always get changed back properly - this sounds like a basic houskeeping process for OSX

[FriarCrazy]

I guess its just an OSX nuance that I will have to get used to.

[edit:] w00t! That was my 100th post! I'm a regular now!

[jsw]

Yeah, it seems like something which should be handled for you. Perhaps the monthly periodic scripts do that, but I'm not sure. In any event, it's something people do after most major installs, and I don't see why the OS couldn't do it for you - it doesn't require rebooting the system or anything.

[rainman::|:|]

Yeah, it seems like something which should be handled for you. Perhaps the monthly periodic scripts do that, but I'm not sure. In any event, it's something people do after most major installs, and I don't see why the OS couldn't do it for you - it doesn't require rebooting the system or anything.

Because many people think they need to customize permissions, and transparent repairs (which do sound lovely) would just keep resetting them. There may be times you'd want permissions to be wrong. Tho a checkbox in System Preferences for "Automatically repair permissions in in the background" would be a welcome addition.

paul