Strange permissions in 10.7.2

[Kanunu]

I have installed 10.7.2 twice, The first time was as an upgrade. I abandoned this installation because it constantly locked up. Doing permission repairs in Disc Utility helped but not for long.

I subsequently partitioned my HD (iMac 2010 1TB HD) and did a clean install. I created a new user ID and used Migration Assistant to move apps and documents. What I found was that I continued to have lockup problems particularly when opening or saving files. Upon investigation I found that my User ID was not listed on most of my drives and several of my folders or was listed with read only privileges. I then went through the time consuming process of adding my user ID with read/write to as many of these as I felt I needed. In that process I found two curiosities.

One was that I was unable to add my User ID in some cases and had to add "Admin" instead.

The other was that strange entities seem to have privileges. These include "system," "Everyone," "Wheel," "Fetching," and "staff."

I wonder if the "Wheel" is the spinning beach ball. It certainly seems to take control of my machine a lot more with Lion than it did with SL.

But more seriously, of this group only "system" and maybe "everyone" seem appropriate to me as having been added by the OS. Can anyone tell me what the others mean and do I really need them or can I eliminate them?

I also have a strange result if I do permission repairs in Disc Utility. If I do a repair, then do it again back to back the same files come up. Is Disc Utility failing to do it's job. A screen shot of a partial repair is attached. The files are always the same.

Thanks for any help. My Lion 10.7.2 is a lot better than a few weeks ago when it made my iMac unusable but somehow I don't think it is all right yet.

 

[KnightWRX]

I subsequently partitioned my HD (iMac 2010 1TB HD) and did a clean install. I created a new user ID and used Migration Assistant to move apps and documents. What I found was that I continued to have lockup problems particularly when opening or saving files. Upon investigation I found that my User ID was not listed on most of my drives and several of my folders or was listed with read only privileges. I then went through the time consuming process of adding my user ID with read/write to as many of these as I felt I needed. In that process I found two curiosities.

Your User ID should only be used for your home directory only. You should not change the filesystem elsewhere to be owned by your User ID.

I wonder if the "Wheel" is the spinning beach ball. It certainly seems to take control of my machine a lot more with Lion than it did with SL.

Wheel is the name of the admin group in BSD Unix. Usually, members of wheel can su to root or sudo to root.

But more seriously, of this group only "system" and maybe "everyone" seem appropriate to me as having been added by the OS. Can anyone tell me what the others mean and do I really need them or can I eliminate them?

You should not be messing around with this stuff at all.

I also have a strange result if I do permission repairs in Disc Utility. If I do a repair, then do it again back to back the same files come up. Is Disc Utility failing to do it's job. A screen shot of a partial repair is attached. The files are always the same.

Seriously, people should stop doing repair permissions all the time. Unless you mess around with chown/chmod (which you seem to have done), the permissions are fine. BTW, it seems to be saying that those items should be files but instead are directories (the first letter is an indicator of the type of file, - means file, d means directory, l means link, b means block device, c means character device, etc..).

Just don't mess with the Unix stuff under the hood if you don't understand the Unix stuff.

 

[Kanunu]

Follow up questions for KnightWRX

Your User ID should only be used for your home directory only. You should not change the filesystem elsewhere to be owned by your User ID.

I did not mean to imply that I changed permissions on all items. I did for instance leave System and Library alone. I did have to change my Applications folder to stop freeze ups. I have changed Applications so that admin is back to read only. We will see. I also had to add myself to my documents folder but that seems OK to change back. I think the sequence mattered. If I had changed permissions on my Home folder first, I think maybe the Documents and other sub-folders would have followed it. I am guessing my problem may have been caused by failure of Migration Assistant (or the Lion installation) to assign R/R privileges to my home folder.

Wheel is the name of the admin group in BSD Unix. Usually, members of wheel can su to root or sudo to root.

Hence I should ignore it?

You should not be messing around with this stuff at all.

Maybe these permissions were the same in SL. But then I never looked because SL never froze up.

Seriously, people should stop doing repair permissions all the time. Unless you mess around with chown/chmod (which you seem to have done), the permissions are fine. BTW, it seems to be saying that those items should be files but instead are directories (the first letter is an indicator of the type of file, - means file, d means directory, l means link, b means block device, c means character device, etc..).

Just don't mess with the Unix stuff under the hood if you don't understand the Unix stuff.

I didn't "mess" with anything (including chown/chmod whatever they are.) This is the current state of my machine based on no doing on my part. I never modified the SUID file /system/Library/......./MacOS/ARD agent. Like most users (as opposed to programmers) I don't even know what it is let alone feel a need to modify it. Today I looked at ,(I did not open), the file with TotalFinder and saw that the last modification date is 7/7/11. This precludes my having modified the file. Is 7/7 the Lion release date?

Your explanation of the items being directories instead of files makes sense. Even if Disc Utility changes the markers they will still be directories the next time. Thanks for the insight, but is there anything I can or should do to correct this?

Thank you for your help and anything that you might add to my followup questions (even if you do tend to be a little preachy. )

 

[KnightWRX]

Your explanation of the items being directories instead of files makes sense. Even if Disc Utility changes the markers they will still be directories the next time. Thanks for the insight, but is there anything I can or should do to correct this?

For a lock up problem and random slow downs (beach balls), don't look at permissions. Permissions either work or don't, they don't cause slow downs in processing or beach balls.

I'd look at memory usage and swap usage. These are the most common cause of beach balling (swapping out and processes stuck in "Waiting for I/O" state). If all else fails, take it to Apple. If this is an old computer outside warranty and since you've already done a completely clean install, I'd try to simply create a completely new user and use that for a while, see if it has anything to do with your personal profile Migration Assistant would've imported.