Prebinding repairs as routine maintenance

[UKnjb]

Hello.
I am running a fully up-dated OS X 10.3.9 and am obsessive about maintenance (left-overs from my unhappy days with Microsoft and PCs).

One of the apps that I have bought is System Optimizer X (SOX 4.7.4; MDK Software, http://www.mkd.cc/sox/) that will repair disk permissions, prebindings (whatever they are) and run maintenance scripts. I have noticed that for the past few runs (once a fortnight or so), there is a consistent 44 permissions that don't get repaired and 34 prebindings that don't get updated - non-existent files, directories and what have you. If I run Disk Utilities on my HD, from an OS X bootable CD, I get 143 permissions that cannot be repaired! I have contacted MDK and asked why their app will not update my pre-bindings, but no response (no change there, then).

My question is, should I be concerned about these prebindings and permissions and stuff? Regardless of the source app for detecting and rectifying the potential problems?

Any help/advice would be appreciated. Thanks

 

[iMeowbot]

What kinds of permissions are unable to be repaired? You can ignore any entries that say "we are using special permissions for ...." but there shouldn't be too many of those in Panther.

The prebinding thing isn't that big of a deal, it's just a mechanism that can help programs start up a little more quickly by telling them in advance where to find library functions. If you have programs that, say, optionally support features not found in your version of OS X, there could be unresolved functions you won't care about because a version check will prevent them from being used.

 

[UKnjb]

Thanks for your reply.

I did a quick re-do of SOX and restricted it to the Permissions options. The first report was:

Started verify/repair permissions on disk disk0s3 Big Bastard
Determining correct file permissions.
: object: ./Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunes malformed object (inconsistant sizeofcmds field in mach header)

I halted SOX after a few minutes, as I wanted to get this reply off - and hopefully get the problem sorted; if there is a problem.

There were indeed a load of the "we are using special permissions" that you cited, but there have been too many of the examples I cite above.

Thanks for the info about the prebindings; they involved a load of /Frameworks/----- stuff, but I was seeing a load of the apps that I commonly use.

 

[iMeowbot]

That "inconsistant sizeofcmds field in mach header" message smells of Tiger fat binary cruft that Panther doesn't fully understand. I suspect that it's harmless. If no one chimes in with anything useful, I'll try a little experiment later today to confirm.

(Eww, and Apple really did leave the spelling as "inconsistant"!)

 

[DerChef]

Sorry to go a wee bit off topic but is "Updating prebinding" a thing of the past in tiger

Or is I hear

 

[iMeowbot]

Sorry to go a wee bit off topic but is "Updating prebinding" a thing of the past in tiger

Prebinding is still there in Tiger, you can run the commands, and installers still insist on doing it. But yes, supposedly the dynamic linker has been tweaked to the point that it will no longer make a difference.

 

[mkrishnan]

Sorry to go a wee bit off topic but is "Updating prebinding" a thing of the past in tiger

There's definitely something different about it. AFAIK, OS X automatically does this for you when it installs an update that needs it -- during the part of the software updater that says "Optimizing System Performance."

If you look at Panther, I'm pretty sure that it is normal to get the number of failed prebindings you report -- I don't remember the exact explanation for it, but I remember I had the same. I don't think there's anything wrong with the software or anything they can fix for you. I think it's much like the certain permissions that always get "set" when you run repair permissions, like the permissions on one of the cd items in the /dev folder. It doesn't mean anything was wrong -- it's just an idiosyncracy. In fact, I seriously doubt the application does anything but trigger the built-in mechanism for updating prebindings anyway, as this is an OS-level function.

In Tiger, for some reason, there are hardly any prebindings that can be made by force update. If you try to run it, almost everything will fail. There was some explanation for this, also, but I don't remember what it was, and the general conclusion was that updating prebindings was a waste of time in Tiger.

The number of permission issues you have is strange, though...

 

[pknz]

...examples I cite above...

Hehehe iSight