repair permissions

In your Applications folder seek out the "Utilities" folder.

Inside that is Disk Utility. Open it and select your Hard Drive (or one of them if you have several).

Click "Repair Disk Permissions" and wait a few minutes while it does its work.

Ian.

Hi RetiredVRS!

There may be some additional information below. Please excuse any repetition of the previous great replies.

About Disk Utility's Repair Disk Permissions feature

TO REPAIR PERMISSIONS ON THE STARTUP DISK

1.Open Disk Utility, located in Applications/Utilities, and select the startup disk in the left column.
2.Click First Aid.
3.Click Verify Disk Permissions to test permissions or Repair Disk Permissions to test and repair permissions. (I never "Verify". Just run "Repair".)

Rerun RP until the only message/messages it reports, are listed in here Spurious Permissions Errors Using: 10.4.x.

When "Repair Permissions" is complete. Quit "Disk Utility".

ali b

Going a step further - if you want to Repair the Disk, you startup your Mac with the Instal DVD inside and the "C" key held down.

From the very small menu that appears you select Disk Utility and this time you can choose "Repair Disk".

Full details should be in the Help Menu.

Ian.

PS. Here they are:-

Testing and repairing your startup disk
If you have problems with your startup disk, you can use Disk Utility to test it for errors and repair it. To repair your disk, you must start up from another disk, such as your Install Mac OS X disc.

You may be able to test your startup disk without starting up from another disk. Open Disk Utility, select your startup disk, and click First Aid. If the Verify Disk button is available, click it to test your disk. You need to start up from another disk only if Disk Utility finds errors or if the Verify Disk button is dimmed. When testing your startup disk, Disk Utility may report errors when there are none. Starting up from another disk and then running Disk Utility gives more accurate results.

You can always test and repair disk permissions on your startup disk without starting up from another disk.

Start up your computer using another disk.
To use the Install Mac OS X disc, insert the disc and restart your computer holding down the Option key, then select the Install Mac OS X disc and click the arrow.

Open Disk Utility.
If you're using the Mac OS X Install disk, follow the onscreen instructions until the menu bar appears with the Utilities menu in it., and then choose Utilities > Open Disk Utility.

Select the startup disk in the list of disks and volumes, then click First Aid.
Check the S.M.A.R.T. Status at the bottom of the window. If you can't see it, be sure you selected the hard disk your volume is on, and not the volume itself.
If the S.M.A.R.T. Status is "About to Fail," back up your files on the disk as soon as possible and replace the disk.
If the S.M.A.R.T. Status is "Verified" or "Not supported," click Repair Disk to repair the disk.
If Disk Utility tells you to look for links to corrupt files in the DamagedFiles directory, two or more files occupy the same space on your hard disk and at least one of them is likely to be corrupt. Examine each affected file in the DamagedFiles folder, which at the top-level of the affected disk. If you can replace it or recreate the file, delete it. If it contains necessary information, open it and examine its data to make sure it has not been corrupted.

If Disk Utility cannot repair your disk or reports "The underlying task reported failure," try to repair the disk again. If that doesn't work, back up as much of your data as possible, reformat your disk, reinstall Mac OS X, and restore your backed up data. If you continue to have problems with your disk, it may be physically damaged and need to be replaced. See an authorized Apple dealer for more information.

In messages on several boards, I've read a person
needs to run repair permissions. New to mac, what
are repair permissions, where is it found, why and
how to run it? Thanks. Vernon

The previous replies are all very helpful and good.

However, I don't think I saw anyone mention that 99% of the time, when people recommend "Repair Permissions" as a fix for something, it won't fix anything. "Repair Permissions" is a mythical panacea, that's suggested to fix ailments such as poor performance and system crashing, as well as curing you from insomnia and protecting against dragons.

Why to run it?

Permissions are simply that - the access permissions on any file or directory on your system. They are defined for owner, group, and everyone else. All filesystem entries also have an owner and a group.

If an application (or user) on your Mac tries to access a file on which you don't have appropriate permissions (e.g. read only when trying to write), then you may get an error message saying something like Permission Denied, or the application might just crash. Chances are you will see a permission denied type error in either system.log or crashreporter.log (You can use /Applications/Utilities/Console to see these)

You know when you install a software update, you get asked to enter your password? This is so that, effectively, the installer can become the root user, which has total control over every file on your system, regardless (mostly) of permissions. If you didn't do this, you'd get a bunch of "Permission Denied" type errors, and the software update would fail.


Repairing Permissions via Disk Utility, as someone else has said, simply checks the on disk permissions with the "correct" permissions (i.e. those defined at install time) for packages that you've installed by double-clicking on a .pkg file. I believe that it only checks for Apple packages, not all 3rd party ones, but I'm not 100% sure - it's not something I run.

It's mostly a waste of time.

Every single file on your computer is susceptible to being corrupted or damaged.

This could be caused by mechanical processes in the computer itself or software conflicts etc.

Frequently the Preference files for a particular program can become corrupted for no apparent reason and the act of deleting them so that the application has to rebuild new ones can cure the problem.

Repairing Permissions does a similar job - it gets rid of damaged permission files and replaces them with good ones.

Obviously, if the problem lies elsewhere, it will be a waste of time "repairing" them but as it is such a simple and quick procedure it is recommended as one of the first strategies to utilise.

Ian.

To go a step further I will say that files are being damaged all the time. At this moment you will almost cetainly have many thousands of damaged pieces of information on your Hard Drive.

Luckily for us the computer usually continues working well but occasionally if the damage is particularly severe or in a vital place we suffer problems.

It is rather like our brains which are losing thousands of cells daily all our lives. Fortunately most of us have enough left to continue living to a reasonable old age without too much impairment.

Ian.

Not to mention the well documented fact that poorly written 3rd party installers often change permissions to system files during the installation process and do a lousy job of setting them back!
There is plenty of anecdotal evidence in these forums that Repairing Permissions resolved numerous issues folks where experiencing after the recent slew of updates for Apple software and the update to Mac OS X 10.4.8!
As per Dr. Smoke of the X Labs (emphasis mine);

A variety of Mac® OS X problems can be caused by corruption in any or all of the following three areas:
• The directory of your Mac OS X startup disk.
• Permissions on System files or folders.
• System, Application, or User-specific cache files.

Repairing disk permissions is not a cure-all, but it certainly has its place as a standard troubleshooting procedure.

As a side note a.j.taylor -
Folks new to the forums, regardless of previous experience, gain respect by offering timely, accurate advice on a consistent basis. The majority of your posts so far appear to be searching for places you can spout off antagonistically on an anti repair permissions crusade and save everyone from the misconception of the repair permissions panacea. We are not in need of a savior!

Honestly, that is just voodoo, files are not being "damaged" all the time.

And A.J. is right, if you read what repair permissions actually does you will find it doesn't "fix" most of what it is prescribed for.

Do you think computers keep every bit or byte of information intact for as long as it resides there?

If you run a diagnostic program checking just your Directory you are likely to find at least 100,000 items out of order unless the Directory has been rebuilt recently to say nothing of the other damaged data.

Ian.

I'm not going to debate you point by point, but this simply isn't how it works, and specifically with any Unix based file system like OS X uses. This isn't OS 8, we don't have to perform voodoo to protect our files these days, the OS does a pretty solid job all on it's own.

Repairing Permissions does a similar job - it gets rid of damaged permission files and replaces them with good ones.
Sorry, Ian... but this is completely incorrect.
For starters, there is no such thing as a "permission file".
Permissions are attirbutes of a file that an be altered by the user, or other software. They aren't separate files, but rather characteristics of the file in question.
Repairing permissions doesn't remove any files nor does it replace any files.

Repairing Permissions, as mentioned before, is quite often run for all the wrong reasons. The practice of running Repair Permissions has developed this "magical fix" status when in reality it is run unnecessarily far more often than when it's really required. It's not a procedure that needs to be included in regular system maintenance.

If you'd like to understand more about what Repair Permissions actually does, you can read more in this Apple article:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25751

A less official, but still accurate, description of Repairing Permissions can be found here:
http://www.unsanity.org/archives/000410.php

Nobody has claimed there is any cure-all - by its very nature a panacea is a complete impossibility.

To say something is a useless therapy because it doesn't work all the time is extreme.

With regard to my incorrect statements I think we are dealing with semantics.

The article you quote states this:-

"When you use Disk Utility to verify or repair disk permissions, it reviews each of the .bom files in /Library/Receipts/ and compares its list to the actual permissions on each file listed. If the permissions differ, Disk Utility reports the difference (and corrects them if you use the Repair feature)".

If the permissions differ they are corrected. In layman's terms that would appear to be saying there is a fault and it will be corrected - which is exactly what I intended, though as a novice my terminology might not have been perfect.

I am pleased to learn that files (if that's the word I mean?) no longer become corrupted. I will now be able to report back to the Final Cut forums that all those people who have cured errant programs by deleting the Preferences or re-installing the applications have been mistaken and the repair was effected by some totally different unknown entity.

Ian.