Disk Permission Repair - cannot be repaired...

Hi all,

Once in a while, I execute Disk Permission Repair from Disk Utility (DU). Recently, I found that DU always reported the same errors, regardless how many times I press "Repair".

The errors are:

Repairing permissions for “Macintosh HD”
Reading permissions database.
Reading the permissions database can take several minutes.

Permissions differ on "Library/Application Support/Apple/ParentalControls/ALRHelperJobs", should be drwxrwxr-x , they are drwxr-xr-x .
Permissions differ on "Library/Application Support/Apple/ParentalControls/ContentFiltering", should be drwxrwxr-x , they are drwxr-xr-x .
Permissions differ on "Library/Application Support/Apple/ParentalControls", should be drwxrwxr-x , they are drwxr-xr-x .
Permissions differ on "Library/Printers/EPSON/InkjetPrinter/Utilities/EPSON Printer Utility3.app/Contents/CodeResources", should be -rw-rw-r-- , they are lrw-rw-r-- .

Group differs on "private/etc/cups", should be 0, group is 26.

ACL found but not expected on "private".

Permissions repair complete


As you can see, DU will say that the repair is complete, but when I re-run the repair again, the same thing will pop-up.

I have tried the following but to NO AVAIL:
- Use Onyx instead
- Reboot after every repair

Is the above NORMAL?

 

What it's telling you is that the permission settings are different from what 's expected. You obviously don't have any Unix/Linux experience or you'd know what the permission settings are.

Permissions differ on "Library/Application Support/Apple/ParentalControls/ALRHelperJobs", should be drwxrwxr-x , they are drwxr-xr-x .

For the above statement, the permission settings your system is seeing are, respectively for Owner, Group & User: (O)drwx (G)r-x (U)r-x
where
r = Read w = Write x = Execute

and ALRHelperJobs is the file in question.

According to your system, what the permission settings SHOULD BE are:

Owner drwx Group rwx User r-x

What's different is that the Group permission should have Write authority (w) but it doesn't. Each permission setting, r,w, or x, lets the Owner, Group or User of a file or executable either Read it, make changes to it (Write to it) or run it if it's an Executable program. Without the proper permission setting, the Owner, Group or User that is accessing the file can't perform certain functions.

Group Write permission is also not turned on for the next file:
Permissions differ on "Library/Application Support/Apple/ParentalControls/ContentFiltering", should be drwxrwxr-x , they are drwxr-xr-x .

Permissions differ on "Library/Application Support/Apple/ParentalControls", should be drwxrwxr-x , they are drwxr-xr-x .
Permissions differ on "Library/Printers/EPSON/InkjetPrinter/Utilities/EPSON Printer Utility3.app/Contents/CodeResources", should be -rw-rw-r-- , they are lrw-rw-r-- .

Group differs on "private/etc/cups", should be 0, group is 26.

ACL found but not expected on "private".

For whatever reason, the utility you're running isn't able to change those particular permission settings. I suspect the first 2 are because they deal with Parental Control permissions, and probably require a password or something to change. As far as the 'l' goes on the Epson printer Owner permission, no clue -been too long. The Group statement on 'private/etc/cups' is just saying that the Group setting should be set to 0, but it's currently 26. The final statement says that it found a file or other element named "ACL" in the folder 'private', and although it was found there it wasn't expected to be there, implying it's there unexpectedly.

Are they problems? Probably not. All the utility is telling you is that it read the Permissions database, and found these discrepancies in the permission status. It's likely that the permissions have to be changed manually and can't be done automatically, or you don't have file ownership permission status in order to make the change via the utility.

 

Have you tried booting off the install DVD and performing a permissions repair from the Disk Utility on the DVD?

 

Cybervision,

I have some knowledge about permission settings through Linux. However, I have NEVER seen permission database where the OS will compare the permission of a file/folder against a "database". But kudos to you for the explanation, very thorough!

But what I am wondering is:
- How did this happen
- Is it common, happening once in a while for even other files/folders (not just Epson, Parental control, etc.)
- What typically this will affect the MBP in long run.

Hmm, haven't tried that. Let me try it.

 

The long term issues are that some programs may stop responding correctly.

Like Chkdsk for example, you can't repair certain permissions on a system while it's in use.

The repair permissions issue is just one of the little 'gotchas' in OS X that means that you actually have to maintain it more frequently than a Windows system in order to keep it running properly. If the user / switcher is sufficiently consumed by JRDF, it won't seem onerous.