On Nov 5, 2010, at 3:57 PM, Dennis B. Swaney wrote:

> If Repair Permissions is not needed in Jaguar/Panther/Tiger/Leopard/Snow 
> Leopard/Lion, then Apple would have removed the capability.

Sigh. Repair Permissions is a tool to fix a specific issue. It is a rare issue, 
now. Before the Installer was completely re-written between 10.1.5 and 10.2 it 
was a horribly common issue, requiring a trip to Terminal to run a poorly 
documented command to fix things.

I've seen systems newer than 10.2 that were actually fixed by RP maybe 4 times, 
all told. Apple techs tell you to do it on phone support because : it can't 
hurt, and it buys them time to look up your real problem, or your problem is 
actually fixed by restarting, often, per their instructions, in safe mode, 
which is actually the part that fixes things. A placebo, in other words, that 
makes the customer feel like they're doing something useful. 

(although if your problem is a failing drive, RP will simply exacerbate the 
issue by uselessly working the drive; time that could be far better spent 
recovering data.)

> That said however, they should not be run routinely, but only after an OS 
> update, Security Update, or as a last resort before wiping a drive to fix a 
> problem.

You do not need to run them after updates. Seriously. Go read John Gruber's 
piece I linked to earlier. It's like rotating your tires every time you get 
gasoline: just not needed. 

Permissions issues that are actually fixable by RP have errors that complain 
about permissions, either in error messages in the GUI or in the system log.

-- 
Bruce Johnson

"Wherever you go, there you are" B. Banzai,  PhD

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