Permissions repair

Hi fellow Mac-ers

I have a two-and-a-half-year-old iMac G5 1 with 1.6 Ghz, 512 Mb RAM, GeForce FX 5200 64Mb VRAM and OSX version 10.4.8. My SL experience isn't great with these specs but it's doable. I have draw distance down to 64 Mb and usually have graphics detail set to low. I crash a couple of times in a session but by no means as frequently as I did and I'm on for several hours a day. [cough]

I regularly run Macjanitor and have done ever since I had the machine, but I used to be a bit lax about repairing permissions. When I did do it, there were very few things to be corrected. Now it's a different story. I repaired permissions about 10 minutes ago and a great deal had to be corrected. It was only 14 hours since I had last repaired them! It's always the same permissions that need repair. Details are posted below.

There has been only one major change in the software I have installed on my machine, and in my usage, in the last seven months: That's right - SL. Could SL be damaging my machine?


Repairing permissions for “Macintosh HD”
Determining correct file permissions.
Group differs on ./Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor.app/Contents/Resources/pmTool, should be 80, group is 0
Owner and group corrected on ./Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor.app/Contents/Resources/pmTool
Permissions corrected on ./Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor.app/Contents/Resources/pmTool
Group differs on ./Applications/Utilities/Keychain Access.app/Contents/Resources/kcproxy, should be 80, group is 0
Owner and group corrected on ./Applications/Utilities/Keychain Access.app/Contents/Resources/kcproxy
Permissions corrected on ./Applications/Utilities/Keychain Access.app/Contents/Resources/kcproxy
Group differs on ./Applications/Utilities/ODBC Administrator.app/Contents/Resources/iodbcadmintool, should be 80, group is 0
Owner and group corrected on ./Applications/Utilities/ODBC Administrator.app/Contents/Resources/iodbcadmintool
Permissions corrected on ./Applications/Utilities/ODBC Administrator.app/Contents/Resources/iodbcadmintool

Permissions repair complete
The privileges have been verified or repaired on the selected volume

Actualy, doing a permissions repair will not damage any thing, in fact it's recomanded.
You'll find that if you don't doa regulare permissions repair, your mac slows down and can act funny.

Thanks Rascal - I know that. What I asked is why it is suddenly necessary so often and why there are so many things wrong when in the past very little needed to be repaired. There were only 14 hours between the two most recent repairs, and look at the number of things that needed to be corrected. Nothing has changed since last year, except in July I installed SL. I am concerned that it may be over-stressing my machine.

Nope. You're not gonna overstress it.

But if you want to clean it up for sure, I think either of the following will work:
Try starting up your mac from the 10.4 startup disk, if you have one. (hold down C key as it boots). Run Disk Utility from the CD. The window that opens will reload the system software, but look in the MENU at the top--you'll find Disk Util hiding there.

Alternatively, try the free utility AppleJack. print a copy of its instructions. Install it. Restart according to the printed directions. Run AppleJack with the Restart when done option, and have it fix ALL the things in its list.

Thanks Sterling. I'll probably do that because I've just run permissions repair again - less than 24 hours after the last time, and up came the same long list of permissions needing repair.

SL is not running as root and can not change the group of system files.

Some other program is doing that.