>Actually you don't need to start Disk Utilities as root, all you need do >is enter an administrative password. DiskUtility appears to be just a >GUI for the unix diskutil. Changing permissions in unix is done with >chmod, which doesn't care whether the files are in use or not.
OK, noted. So I take it then that the recommendation to boot of the CD in order to repair permissions is some kind of consideration from the pre-X era. Strange that Apple would write this if it's not needed. Though, it's not like it's the first time users know more about the OS than do Apple. Great, this means I probably fix my permissions more often, which is probably very good for my OS. Obviously, I also verified the operation with: (sudo) diskutil verifyPermissions / Just a guess that was the command. However, I'd suggest that you give this excellent advice with the GUI solution first. I'm not kidding when I say that I know quite a few Mac users for whom, the very notion of having to use the terminal command line interface would put them off OS X until the opposite have been proven. I'm working very hard to make these people understand that you don't *have to* use the terminal in order to fix things. I certainly don't feel repugnance of the CLI, but I respect that some people do. OK, great tip. Charles!
