On Jan 14, 2010, at 1:02 PM, Elliott Price wrote:
You could try repairing permissions, and running a Disk Check from Disk Utility. If the Word permissions have gotten corrupted, this could be fixed easily with a permissions repair.
Sigh...it appears to be time for the annual "Ranting Against Permissions Repair".
Permissions Repair will not fix anything to do with Word, because Permissions Repair CAN ONLY affect Apple System software; more specifically any Apple System Software for which there exists receipt packages in the /Library/Receipts folder. It will never affect any application.
Also, Permissions don't "become corrupted". They don't age, they don't degrade, they don't do anything unless something specifically changes them.
Permissions Repair exists because in OS X 10.1.5 and lower, the Installer and the system could fubar file permissions on a grand scale. There existed a separate app to do RP and it became very widely used, largely because Installer was broken, and OS X was a primitive thing given to wild fits of non-productive behavior and mysterious inner explosions.
(The difference between 10.1.5 and 10.2 was like night and day, chiefly because Apple's systems programmers rewrote pretty damn much the entire OS again, from scratch, for 10.2.)
So they added RP to Disk Utility, AND fixed Installer so it didn't do that anymore in 10.2, so it's really a 10.2 solution for a 10.1.5 problem.
However along the line Repair Permissions became this Magical Incantation, like 'Rebuild the Desktop' of yore. While it does work under certain, very restricted and generally quite obvious conditions ("I just installed a massive System Update and when it rebooted nothing worked!") RP is treated as some Sovereign Cure for all and sundry conditions, like this.
Apple Support Gnomes will tell you to do this so that you'll shut up and let them be while they look for the real solutions to your problem.
(I have personally witnessed only two, possibly three instances in many years of using, administering and supporting OS X where RP actually fixed anything, and I've been using OS X since the day after the Public Beta was released, and using ONLY OSX since the day 10.2 was released.)
Don't just take my word for it, though... <http://daringfireball.net/2006/04/repair_permissions_voodoo> and this: <http://www.unsanity.org/archives/000410.php> referenced by John. -- Bruce Johnson University of Arizona College of Pharmacy Information Technology Group Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs
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