Repairing Permissions?

[slooksterPSV]

I have a few questions about Repairing Permissions (the most common thing to fix the most common aches in Mac).
1. How do you do it (where do you get etc.)?
2. What EXACTLY does it do?
3. How often should you do this?

Thank you for your answers. Its greatly appreciated.

[edesignuk]

Sticky: GUIDE: Zap PRAM, Repair Permissions, & run FSCK (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=89736)

This will tell you how to run it, and i think someone further down the thread posted what it does and why it is needed some times.

[James Craner]

To run repair permissions run the disk utility program located in the Utilities sub folder of your applications folder. Select your primary hard disk and click the first Aid tab, if not already active. You will see the option to repair permissions at the bottom.

Repair permissions repairs any incorrectly assigned file permissions, which can sometimes occur from time to time, particularly when installing new software or patches. Incorrectly assigned (file) permissions can cause problems with Unix that underlies Mac OSX.

Run repair permissions if you are having stability issues with certain applications or perhaps when you installed new software or updates.

[slooksterPSV]

Sorry for posting the thread then, lets put it in wasteland.