Permissions broken?

[benji888]

not sure if this is the best place to post this, or if I should post in MBP or OSX section...

Preface: My 750GB seagate quit on me, I picked up a toshiba 500GB, a black-friday substitute until I could get warranty replacement. I then picked up an SSD and made a DIY fusion drive created with an OWC 44GB SSD & the 500GB toshiba HDD, and then deleted and recreated with the OWC 44GB SSD & 750GB seagate 7200RPM sataII when I received the warranty replacement. I didn't have the issue with just the 500GB HDD, only after getting the SSD and creating the DIY fusion drive. I've been waiting to write this to see if the issue persisted after getting my 750GB replacement drive and re-creating the fusion drive the second time. I used mavericks for the DIY drive (10.9.1)

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I've searched the issue and not finding answers. I have made my own DIY fusion drive on my mid2010 13" (MacBookPro 7,1). It works well, except, sometimes online it seems to get caught in some kind of loop or something, it stalls, especially when accessing forums or some websites. For instance, when this happens I usually can go to macrumors.com, but it will not go to the forums (eventually says "failed to load page"). When I use disk utility to repair permissions it will be fine for a while, but I have to keep doing this over and over.

Permissions repair has many, many lines to it, seems extremely excessive ...itunes & library/coreservices seem to be the main culprits, some lines of which include "SSD" in the description.

I wasn't sure at first if the problems began with the security breach on macrumors, or iTunes 11, or when I installed the SSD and created the fusion drive, but, I'm thinking it goes back to the fusion drive.

I've already tried deleting and reinstalling itunes. I've already tried installing OS X again.

Is permissions broken?

Is there some preference file or keychain file or something I can delete to fix it? (I am using iCloud Keychain)

Is there a problem using encrypted backups in itunes (for iOS devices) with DIY fusion drives?

My TM backup I initially restored from was encrypted at the time...is this a problem?

Anyone know what might be going on?

here's what it looks like...this is repairing permissions immediately after having just repaired them. (too long for one file attachment, so broke it into two files):

 

[Weaselboy]

Try doing a command-r boot to recovery and use Disk Utility from there to repair permissions and also do a repair disk. Do repair permissions twice and see if you still get the errors the second time.

 

[benji888]

Try doing a command-r boot to recovery and use Disk Utility from there to repair permissions and also do a repair disk. Do repair permissions twice and see if you still get the errors the second time.

Already tried these.

also, I already stated this above the links to permissions text: "...this is repairing permissions immediately after having just repaired them."

 

[Weaselboy]

Already tried these.

also, I already stated this above the links to permissions text: "...this is repairing permissions immediately after having just repaired them."

I was suggesting doing a permissions repair from Disk Utility while booted from the recovery partition. Not the same thing. Good luck.

 

[GGJstudios]

Some people repair, or recommend repairing permissions for situations where it isn't appropriate. Repairing permissions only addresses very specific issues. It is not a "cure all" or a general performance enhancer, and doesn't need to be done on a regular basis. It also doesn't address permissions problems with your files or 3rd party apps.

Five Mac maintenance myths

​

About Disk Utility's Repair Disk Permissions feature​

Disk Utility repairs the permissions for files installed by the Mac OS X Installer, Software Update, or an Apple software installer. It doesn’t repair permissions for your documents, your home folder, and third-party applications. You can verify or repair permissions only on a disk with Mac OS X installed.

Does Disk Utility check permissions on all files? Files that aren't installed as part of an Apple-originated installer package are not listed in a receipt and therefore are not checked. For example, if you install an application using a non-Apple installer application, or by copying it from a disk image, network volume, or other disk instead of installing it via Installer, a receipt file isn't created. This is expected. Some applications are designed to be installed in one of those ways. Also, certain files whose permissions can be changed during normal usage without affecting their function are intentionally not checked.

Troubleshooting permissions issues in Mac OS X​

If repairing permissions results in error messages, some of these messages can be ignored and should be no cause for concern.

Mac OS X: Disk Utility's Repair Disk Permissions messages that you can safely ignore​

 

[benji888]

Some people repair, or recommend repairing permissions for situations where it isn't appropriate. Repairing permissions only addresses very specific issues. It is not a "cure all" or a general performance enhancer, and doesn't need to be done on a regular basis. It also doesn't address permissions problems with your files or 3rd party apps. ...

yes, this is why my headline "Permissions broken?" because it seems something was broken, I shouldn't have to repair permissions over and over like that, but I did it because, if I could not post here in macrumors forums, for instance, after repairing permissions it would work fine again (for a while). I had concerns about either iCloud keychain being finicky or something very base, perhaps something wrong with the creation of the fusion drive.

I decided, after reading some info. on creating a DIY fusion drive with Mavericks (I didn't see these before, but only a couple things that were written before Mavericks came out), what I did may have worked for Mtn Lion, but, seems like a slightly different approach may be needed for Mavericks.

So, I did a TM backup and deleted the fusion drive and started from scratch. I did a couple things differently:

First I formatted each drive, but, this time I installed Mavericks on the HDD, so as to have a recovery partition on it. (I did not sign in to iCloud, or enter my appleID password at this point). Then, when I created the fusion drive, for the HDD, instead of using the entire volume (disk1), I used the larger partition (leaving out the recovery partition), (disk1s2), I still used the entire volume of the SSD (disk0).

I then went into recovery mode and restored from TM backup, instead of installing Mavericks on the fusion drive first. (I also reset the PRAM at certain points in this whole process).

I also, after restoring from TM backup, when setting up the computer, checked set up iCloud keychain when prompted and it set it up properly. Previously, when I tried this after installing things differently, it asked me to start with a new keychain, so I went back and checked not to set it up, then turned it on later, as it seemed like creating a new keychain would really mess things up. (I'm not sure if this made any difference or not).

So far, so good...seems all is well, even seems to be working a bit faster than it already was! and the whole process went faster this time, so, after formatting the two drives, I think installing Mavericks on the HDD before merging the SSD & HDD made a difference. I have a Recovery HD partition on the HDD and a Boot OS X partition on the SSD. I will post an update if things change or in about a week if things don't change.

If anyone wants to create their own DIY fusion drive I will be glad to post links to the information I read.

 

[benji888]

So, I did a TM backup and deleted the fusion drive and started from scratch. I did a couple things differently:

First I formatted each drive, but, this time I installed Mavericks on the HDD, so as to have a recovery partition on it. (I did not sign in to iCloud, or enter my appleID password at this point). Then, when I created the fusion drive, for the HDD, instead of using the entire volume (disk1), I used the larger partition (leaving out the recovery partition), (disk1s2), I still used the entire volume of the SSD (disk0).

I then went into recovery mode and restored from TM backup, instead of installing Mavericks on the fusion drive first. (I also reset the PRAM at certain points in this whole process).

I also, after restoring from TM backup, when setting up the computer, checked set up iCloud keychain when prompted and it set it up properly. Previously, when I tried this after installing things differently, it asked me to start with a new keychain, so I went back and checked not to set it up, then turned it on later, as it seemed like creating a new keychain would really mess things up. (I'm not sure if this made any difference or not).

So far, so good...seems all is well, even seems to be working a bit faster than it already was! and the whole process went faster this time, so, after formatting the two drives, I think installing Mavericks on the HDD before merging the SSD & HDD made a difference. I have a Recovery HD partition on the HDD and a Boot OS X partition on the SSD. I will post an update if things change or in about a week if things don't change.

If anyone wants to create their own DIY fusion drive I will be glad to post links to the information I read.

I forgot to reply to this...which means it still works well, no more issues! ...going to do a DIY fusion drive for a friend tomorrow.

 

[satcomer]

If anyone wants to create their own DIY fusion drive I will be glad to post links to the information I read.

The best Mavericks DIY post was by Dark Dragoon post on his 10.9 DIY change find that will help anyone with a DIY Fusion drive in 10.9 (because of the change from 10.8 to 10.9)