Permissions??

[RDrebsky6868]

I was running disk utility because some of my programs were going on and off without me touching them. When I ran it there were no problems with my disk. However, I saw another area that checked for permissions. I wanted to know what my permissions are and what they do. When I ran the scan it said that a bunch of them were wrong so I wanted to know what could have caused that problem.

 

[DXoverDY]

I was running disk utility because some of my programs were going on and off without me touching them. When I ran it there were no problems with my disk. However, I saw another area that checked for permissions. I wanted to know what my permissions are and what they do. When I ran the scan it said that a bunch of them were wrong so I wanted to know what could have caused that problem.

permissions... they go something like this.

you have read, write and execute permissions

read means obviously you can read the file... write means you can write to the file, and execute is something along the lines of read/execute.

what can happen is that some programs open and the permissions of the files might be changed somewhere along the line by a 3rd party installer or something. when this happens you may have a file that is yours.. meaning it's part of your files in your home directory for example... that you cannot read, write or execute or any combination of those.

repair permissions fixes those little errors by correcting the permissions of all the files. if you ever have weird things happen, restart, repair permissions, restart again and give it a shot. almost all of the time this fixes those odd problems. mostly due to an application not having access to a particular file it needs.

 

[RDrebsky6868]

Intruder Alert

Is it possilbe for someone to have access to my computer through 3rd party software messing with the permissions. For instance a roomate putting something on my computer etc.

 

[DXoverDY]

Is it possilbe for someone to have access to my computer through 3rd party software messing with the permissions. For instance a roomate putting something on my computer etc.

ftp could do that... it's possible but explain how you mean and i could maybe give you a better answer to that

 

[sneckner]

all they need is firewire and a mac...

Is it possilbe for someone to have access to my computer through 3rd party software messing with the permissions. For instance a roomate putting something on my computer etc.

As far as I know, there is no way to stop someone from accessing your computer if they boot your computer as a firewire drive. To try it, connect two macs with a firewire cable and hold down "T" while booting the computer you want to access as a drive. The other computer should be on already. I am more worried about this than 3rd party software.

SX

 

[DXoverDY]

As far as I know, there is no way to stop someone from accessing your computer if they boot your computer as a firewire drive. To try it, connect two macs with a firewire cable and hold down "T" while booting the computer you want to access as a drive. The other computer should be on already. I am more worried about this than 3rd party software.

SX

2 words... File Vault