Repairing Permissions

[lwilliam]

This isn't quite a Logic question, but it's pretty relevant to keeping the system running smoothly.

 

I repair permissions pretty frequently on my system drive. Are you supposed to somehow repair permissions on other drives/partitions as well? If so, how would you do that? The option for non-system drives is greyed out in Disk Utility.

[David Nahmani]

You can only repair permissions on a drive that has a system installed on it, and you can only repair the permissions of those system files and folders.

 

This is not something you should do on a regular basis, but only when you suspect something wrong. Some people suggest doing it everytime after installing new software.

[triplets]

David is right. Don't repair permission that frequently because it defeats the purpose. Doing it after installing new software is a good habit, especially third party software and programs.

[Jope]

From my point of view, repairing permissions is useful BEFORE an installation (although it also is advisable afterwards), and you should start the procedure from your hard disk, as doing it when booted from your system DVD sets the permissions different. Once I updated OS X from 10.4.6 to 10.4.7, and after that I could not call the Preferences Pane from the Apple menu any more, although it still could be launched from the Applications folder. I could not fix this, I had to restore the disk from my last backup (good to have one!), repair the permissions and do the update again, and voilá! - this time everthing worked perfectly.

Still reading? So here is again my advice: Repair the file permissions before installations or updates and additionally afterwards, and do it from your normal boot drive. You don't have to do it in between.