Permissions problem in displaypolicyd

I'm having the same problem on a MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2012)+ discrete graphics, closed the clamshell and the next day to my surprise the display didn't turn on after I opened the mac. Did a Permission check & repair and I reported it to apple at bugreport.apple.com

I observed that If I repair my permissions with Disk Utility the problem repeats itself.

It's been two days now since I last repaired my permissions and haven't experienced the problem with my internal display.

I decided not to repair my permissions and so far so good.

I don't have an external display to test this out, but I had problems with my internal display and messages in Disk Utility after verifying the permissions.

Since deleting that folder I haven't had any problems.

So, I had originally deleted the folder and contents shown in Verify Permissions (highlighted), not the one in usr/libexec. After deleting that, rebooting, etc. I couldn't get the external display recognized. Was that the correct approach?

I just found this same permissions issue and repaired them with Disk Utility. I'm hopeful that this will fix the issue I've been having with my HDMI monitor failing to activate when connecting through a MDP-to-HDMI adapter cable. I'm not at home now to test it but I will post results as soon as I can. I'm not the only one having this problem, so let's hope it's as simple as this!

I finally got it solved (my problem sudden computer shutdowns, and horizontal lines on screen, with computer something not accepting to restart... saw that displaypolicyd permissions was always faulty as I was trying to troubleshoot).

It was actually a hardware problem: faulty video card covered by Apple recall: https://www.apple.com/sa/support/macbookpro-videoissues/

My computer is a MacBook Pro 15" Early 2011.

I got my computer to Apple's authorized distributor who replaced the motherboard for no charge (it took them 2 weeks 😟 ). I now it work fine.

I hope this helps.

I'm having the same issue for the past month or so.

First Time

1. Everything working fine (though in Fusion I was getting chronic blinking that would lose focus on the VM - upgrade to 7 fixed)
2. Walk away and come back - screen black
3. First time, reset PRAM worked, and screen back back on
4. Subsequent two times - NOTHING seems to make any difference (resetting PRAM and SMC don't fix anything)

Last week, I had the laptop connected to an external display because primary was black, and all of a sudden, the display just came back on (no rhyme or reason). It has worked perfectly for about 2 weeks.

This morning, I came into the office, hooked up an external monitor, everything working normally with extended display, <BLINK> laptop screen went black again. I did find a few errors in system.log regarding ambient light sensor, so I turned that off. I have also disabled any power management so the laptop no longer goes to sleep (it dims a little on battery - that is the only checkbox I have selected). I have also turned off automatic switching of graphics.

Every reboot breaks the permissions for this directory (owner and group set back to 244), so it looks like this directory must be created on startup of this displaypolicyd thing. I tried adding the "fixesPermissions.sh" script to my profile - no dice (but if the dir doesn't exist when it runs - that would make sense).

Permissions after reboot:

drwxr-xr-x 2 _displaypolicyd _displaypolicyd 68 Sep 25 22:22 displaypolicyd

I just found the displaypolicyd.log and .stdout.log files and I see this for every reboot:

u>3210670761 /usr/libexec/displaypolicyd: Started at Mon Jan 5 11:59:46 2015

u>3252012995 ERROR: AGDC suppport not present in system

u>3252013024 ERROR: Policy engine instance init failed

I also used:

sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.displaypolicyd.plist

sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.displaypolicyd.plist

so I could watch the log and see what happens. On load, I get the above errors, and it doesn't seem anyone knows what this means. I saw one person speculate that the "battery was failing or there was a problem with RAM, PRAM, or the SMC" <not super helpful>.

Is AGDC something newer than my MBP? If that's the case - then I'm way down the wrong road because the problem is intermittent, and nothing I do seems to consistently fix it (like reset PRAM worked the first time - then not again, and resetting SMC did nothing. Then after I have resolved to just live with it for now and use an external monitor, the screen comes back on.. now its just gone back off. WTH, Apple??).

It works for me.

Updating to 10.10.3 in my Samsung monitor or in the LCD of the MBP (13-inch mid 2012) appears a flicker from time to time in a block of pixels in random places. Clicking in those places or moving a window the problem stops. I made a reset to PRAM, SMC, but without result.

In every reboot my permissions was the same:

User differs on “private/var/db/displaypolicyd”; should be 0; user is 244.

Group differs on “private/var/db/displaypolicyd”; should be 0; group is 244.

I tried a clean install of 10.10.3 and the problem not only remains when I pluged in the external monitor but also when I worked in Macbook alone.

I rolled back to 10.10.2. I made a clean install from 10.10.0 to 10.10.2

Unfortunately during the installation and updates the problem with displaypolicyd was still there. I do not get why.

Finally I deleted the folder displaypolicyd.

The trouble with permissions is fixed. Everything works fine (fingers crossed)

I had a similar issue where my MacBook Pro would freeze after entering the password on a lock screen. The problem happened only when using a lock screen; if I did not use a lock screen (System Preferences->Security->General->"Require password..." unticked), then my Pro would come back from sleep without issue. Using Disk Utility to fix permissions in /private/var/db/displaypolicydappears to fix the problem, but the permissions require fixing after each reboot, it seems.

Did the fix, added the 5 lines to the file, but it's giving an error saying syntax is wrong (something similar to that, my computer likes to crash every 2 minutes before)

Am I doing the fix properly?

Thanks,

Matt.

I have gotten it to work, hope this doesn't happen again, cos' its really troublesome. Read key as a command and stuck it in sudoers, yikes. Had to modify permissions on each of the files to get it to open without sudo.

However, it seems like the shell file is wiped every time the system boots up, why is that so?

This didn't seem to help my HDMI connectivity problem. But I didn't restart after the permissions repair, nor install the script. I just applied the fix then tried connecting the display, whereupon it still failed to start. Is the script and restart absolutely necessary, or does the permission repair fix the issue even after the system has booted?

There seem to be three solutions:

- correct permissions

- download thunderbolt firmware update (1.2) from appStore

- reset PRAM + unplug then replug the monitor cable from the adapter (I have dvi -> thunderbolt)

so for me the last one worked, and now I have two external displays on Yosemite working ok. I did all three of them though, so perhaps the combination worked.

Gah. Tried the "repair permissions" utility with no joy. I can't leave my computer locked when connected to a Thunderbolt display. I can leave the computer locked when connected to a Mini DisplayPort LED display, which is better.

My Thunderbolt display firmware was already up to date, and so did not need the recent 1.2 update. So whatever the problem is, it's not the firmware.