Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT
I cannot use the Snow Leopard install disc (that I purchased) to repair disc permissions if the computer didn't ship from Apple with Snow Leopard?!?!?
How am I supposed to adequately repair the disc permissions if I bought a used computer that didn't come with the factory OS disc and I upgraded to Snow Leopard?
3GHz Xeon Dual Quad Core, Mac OS X (10.5.7), FCP 7
You shouldn't be repairing Permissions from the disc. Do this straight from Disk Utility on the normal boot volume.
Why are you repairing Permissions?
I was told a long time ago my another long time Mac user that you have to repair disc permissions after installing or uninstalling any software or after a crash. It's my understanding that it's a good idea to repair disc permissions every once in a while and that's what I've been doing for years - from the install discs.
It's my understanding that you need to do this from a disc that's not the startup disc for a thorough repair of everything.
And, thanks!
The rule is to perform Repair Permissions with the same version of OS X you are doing the repair to. So don't boot to a Snow Leopard disk to repair permissions on a Tiger drive, or Leopard on a Snow Leopard drive, etc.
But as WZZZ said, there's no reason to boot to the OS X DVD to do a Repair Permissions. Just open Disk Utility on the hard drive you booted to and run it.
What you can't do from the disk your booted to is Repair Disk.
First, it depends what you install. If it uses the Mac installer, then, maybe, yes (or anything from Adobe.) But certainly not any software. There are times for running Permissions repair, but Permissions repair is NOT needed for general maintenance. You won't be doing any harm, but you will be mostly wasting time.
Read this.
http://unsanity.org/archives/000410.php
Now, as for repairing from the DVD. This is completely wrong. Since you have installed the OS from the DVD, you have doubtless updated to a different version, there have been security updates, Java updates, you name it. All of these will have changed the actual Permissions database on the volume you are running from.
If you repair from the DVD, you are ignoring all the changes that have been made and recorded, and you are actually introducing errors, rather than correcting them.
No... I have Snow Leopard installed and running and I have a recently purchased Snow Leopard install disc but am unable to use it to repair disc permissions because (as I found out) it's not possible to use the newer OS disc if the machine started out with Tiger.
I guess I'll just repair disc permissions from the boot disc, thanks.
If you see any SUID messages, they can be ignored.
Mac OS X: Disk Utility's Repair Disk Permissions messages that you can safely ignore
That's good to know. Thanks!
Joe, it sounds like you have it backwards, and it's not the permissions. You can't boot a machine with an older OS than it shipped with.
You never want to repair permissions from the DVD unless you have to (I'm not sure I can come up with that scenario, though). So, it doesn't matter what OS version you have installed and what disk OS you have.
At the risk of starting a thread war that will last decades, there's rarely a reason to repair permissions. I don't do it unless I have actual permission problems in the system area of the Mac. It doesn't affect the user domain, so if that is where the problem is, it won't do a thing for you.
There are quite a few people that claim Adobe mucks up permissions. I've only installed Adobe Photoshop Elements, and it only screwed up its own permissions. They may be right based on my experiences with their software, but I don't know personally.
Lemme get this straight...
