Regular automatic permission repairs
Ivan | Wed, 2005-06-29 11:46| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 daily.local.zip | 195 bytes |
Misbehaving applications, moving files between users and other operations can screw up the permissions of your files on your hard disk. This may cause various problems. For example applications quitting or files not opening.
OS X is already running daily, weekly and monthly crons, so it makes sense to add permission repair to one of these schedules. To do this we will make OS X execute a small Unix command diskutil repairPermissions / daily.
Download the file below to your Desktop and unzip it. Open Terminal and type in the two commands below. (Replace yourusername with your username. ;)sudo cp /Users/yourusername/Desktop/daily.local /etc
sudo chmod +x /etc/daily.local
The first command copies the downloaded file from your Desktop to your invisible /etc folder. You will need to give your admin password after the first command. The second one gives the system access this file.
From now on your permissions will be repaired every night. If you want it to be just weekly or monthly, just rename the file.
Commenting on this Blog entry is closed.
Sweet tip! I've been wondering how to do this for awhile now.
A couple of questions--
Is this technique compatible for all OS X versions?
If I ever wanted to stop running it, what would I have to do?
Thanks!!
Hey Ivan!
Thank you very much for this small but handy tip - I am one of those permission freaks, now i can sleep calmly :P
I too would like to know about uninstalling (if i ever have to)
Thanks again!
You just have to delete the file, like this:
rm etc/daily.localWhenever I try to do something that requires admin password in Terminal and the queue comes up for me to type it in my keyboard suddenly doesn't work. What's the deal?
Visit My Website!: - David Bailey - graphic artist - ONLINE PORTFOLIO -
Heh. Your keyboard didn't stop working. OS X just doesn't show any onscreen info when you enter a password. Just go ahead and type your password; it will work.
Heh that makes sense! Thanks!
Visit My Website!: - David Bailey - graphic artist - ONLINE PORTFOLIO -
Don't forget to read this (especially the comments):
http://www.unsanity.org/archives/000410.php
Well, permission repair is not a magic potion that fixes every issue with yout Mac of course, but in several cases screwed up permissions are responsible for misbehaviour.
But I have yet to see a single well documented case of permission repair doing anything useful since system 10.3. But doing it automatically hopefully gets rid of that rediculous kneejerk reaction of repairing permissions when even the slightest thing goes wrong. At least peoplem will then think "Oh my permissions are alright, so the problem must be something else!" (which usually is the case).
Exercises in Futility