question for you Mac gurus

[Kirk Gittings]

Is there any reason to run permissions repair from both Disk Warrior and Disk Utility?

[Schewe]

Is there any reason to run permissions repair from both Disk Warrior and Disk Utility?

Not that I'm aware of....

There is something to be said for restarting with a boot drive clone and running Disk Utility which is what I do before running disk permissions. Lots of potentials out there. Best bet? Lots of redundant, duplicate Back Ups so you can avail yourself of options...

[Kirk Gittings]

Thanks jeff. I do run both Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner. So you are suggesting to boot from CCC and then run Disk Warrior on the main drive. Educate me please why?

[Schewe]

Thanks jeff. I do run both Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner. So you are suggesting to boot from CCC and then run Disk Warrior on the main drive. Educate me please why?

Disk Warrior or Disk Utility (Disk Warrior has some extended capability vs Disk Utility) but yes...fixing the HD before trying to fix permissions is advisable and you can only do that when booted from a different boot drive...

[francois]

Thanks jeff. I do run both Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner. So you are suggesting to boot from CCC and then run Disk Warrior on the main drive. Educate me please why?

You don't need to boot from the CCC drive, just from any bootable drive or from a Mac OS X install DVD (or USB key). Just make sure you use the same (*) Mac OS X version. Otherwise, Spotlight will start reindexing the content of the mounted drives - not a big problem in fact.

(*) Doesn't have to be identical to the .x release, just leopard/leopard, snow l/snow l or lion/lion.

[tastar]

Download and run Applejack in single user mode. Get disk repair, permissions repair, cache file clean up, swap file clean up and plist verification in one easy to use tool. It's open source (free) and a great tool that should be installed on every Mac.

[digitaldog]

Download and run Applejack in single user mode. Get disk repair, permissions repair, cache file clean up, swap file clean up and plist verification in one easy to use tool. It's open source (free) and a great tool that should be installed on every Mac.

AppleJack plus Disk Warrior, you’re set. I’d probably run Disk warrior off another boot drive, then run AppleJack upon reboot to that drive.

[K.C.]

Repairing permissions is rarely if ever needed. I'm surprised to see some of the knowledgeable people here posting that they bother. Same story with the functions of Applejack, OSX takes care of all of these on it's own. But then if you just like to pop the hood and tinker.

Excerpted from http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1452


Does Disk Utility check permissions on all files?

Files that aren't installed as part of an Apple-originated installer package are not listed in a receipt and therefore are not checked. For example, if you install an application using a non-Apple installer application, or by copying it from a disk image, network volume, or other disk instead of installing it via Installer, a receipt file isn't created. This is expected. Some applications are designed to be installed in one of those ways.

Also, certain files whose permissions can be changed during normal usage without affecting their function are intentionally not checked.

Disk Warrior has some extended capability vs Disk Utility...

That would be the understatement of the decade. DW is a powerful tool. DU is a completely different tool.

[RobSaecker]

Repairing permissions is rarely if ever needed. I'm surprised to see some of the knowledgeable people here posting that they bother. Same story with the functions of Applejack, OSX takes care of all of these on it's own. But then if you just like to pop the hood and tinker.

I completely agree WRT permission repair. In my nearly decade of OS X use, I've never seen a problem that was fixed by repairing permissions. That's anecdotal evidence, of course, and is not meant to suggest that there are no permission problems that need to be fixed, but they don't seem very common.

Cache clearing, OTOH, is not something that OS X takes care of on it's own. On a couple occasions I've had mdworker (Spotlight) endlessly indexing a few files, over and over without end. The cure for that is clearing caches in /System/Library/Caches, which I don't mind doing manually, but some might be more comfortable using Applejack or the like. 

DW is a powerful tool. DU is a completely different tool.

And that's the truth.