kmosx4: Spurious Permission errors in OS X 10.4

by: Michael Conniff

Last modified: Mar 8, 2021 3:52 PM

0 243 Last modified Mar 8, 2021 3:52 PM

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Repair Permissions messages in OS X 10.4

There are a number of messages issued by the Repair Permissions feature of Disk Utility, when it is run repeatedly, that are often assumed to be "errors". This FAQ lists those you may encounter in OS X 10.4. Most are covered by the following article in the Knowledge base: Disk Utility reports some messages that you can ignore when checking permissions.

The only message when 10.4 is initially installed is "Permissions repair complete".

After 10.4.1, the following message appeared:

We are using special permissions for the file or directory ./Library/Widgets. New permissions are 16877

See the above article.

After 10.4.2, the following additional message appeared:

We are using special permissions for the file or directory ./usr/lib/php/build/acinclude.m4. New permissions are 33060

After 10.4.3, the "We are using special permissions for the file or directory" message appears for many widgets, including "Dictionary.wdgt", "Flight Tracker.wdgt", "Stickies.wdgt", and "Unit Converter.wdgt". The "New permissions" are mostly 33188, with 33261 for "Dictionary.wdgt/Dictionary.widgetplugin/Contents/MacOS/Dictionary".

In addition, the following appear after 10.4.3:

We are using a special gid for the file or directory ./System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/MacOS/Dock. New gid is 0
We are using special permissions for the file or directory ./System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/MacOS/Dock. New permissions are 33261
We are using special permissions for the file or directory ./usr/lib/php/build/Makefile.global. New permissions are 33060
We are using special permissions for the file or directory ./usr/lib/php/build/mkdep.awk. New permissions are 33060
We are using special permissions for the file or directory ./usr/lib/php/build/phpize.m4. New permissions are 33060
We are using special permissions for the file or directory ./usr/lib/php/build/scanmakefilein.awk. New permissions are 33060

Again, see the above article.

After 10.4.4, additional "Special Permissions" messages appeared for very many files in /Applications/DVD Player.app, and for the following widgets in /Library/Widgets: Address Book, Calculator, Calendar, Dictionary, Phone Book, Stocks, Weather and World Clock.

The 10.4.5 Update, Security Update 2006-001 and Security Update 2006-002 did not add any further messages.

After 10.4.6, the "Special Permissions" messages no longer appear (but the messages for secure.log below are unaffected).

The following messages will appear after the periodic 'weekly' script has been run, but then not reappear until another 'weekly' run:

Permissions differ on ./private/var/log/secure.log, should be -rw------- , they are -rw-r-----
Owner and group corrected on ./private/var/log/secure.log
Permissions corrected on ./private/var/log/secure.log

This is due to the 'weekly' script having a different set of permissions for log files.

Note that you will get the same messages if you use some other method to Repair Permissions, including the use of third party utilities.

This list will be updated as more information becomes available.

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