[G4] Repair permissions documentation: was 10.2.5

[Brooks Graham]

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The fun thing about watching this thread is that you're *all* correct!

What has been missing is the distinction between the two things that 
the Apple filesystem repair tools do:  (1) integrity check/repair and 
(2) attribute check/repair.

To safely repair the integrity of a filesystem, it should not be in 
use.  By "integrity" I mean the internal structures that maintain 
pointers that connect directories to files and other directories, etc.  
If those pointers get messed up, then all sorts of bad things can 
happen.  Therefore, yes, you must/should boot off some other OS image 
to check and/or repair the root filesystem (boot drive).  To the best 
of my knowledge, neither NFS+ nor UFS has changed since 10.0.0 so any 
OS X boot image should do.  (The utilities could have gotten better 
with age, and there's always DiskWarrior, et.al.)

Permissions are different.  Permissions are just attributes of a file.  
They can be safely changed at any time.  That's why Apple allows you to 
do the "Repair Disk Permissions" without booting from an alternate OS.

And I remember reading somewhere that the "Repair Disk Permissions" 
utility uses a file which maps the appropriate permission attributes to 
specific files in the root filesystem.  This file gets updated 
periodically like when an OS update is applied.  So if that's the case, 
to get the "most correct" permissions settings, you shouldn't run it 
from an older OS image.  I wish I could provide an URL or something, 
but I can't remember where I read that.

Hope that helps.

- -brooks


On Wednesday, May 7, 2003, at 10:41 PM, Nathan Gable wrote:

> My two cents--Apple Service Provider training states you MUST boot 
> from the OS 10.2 CD to use the First Aid utility.
>
> Nate
>
>>  Let me be the first to say that I am glad someone, (John) came 
>> across this.
>> I was really not trying to start an argument about this, as a matter 
>> of fact
>> I am glad that there is something on this subject. Kudo's John. I 
>> actually
>> can't wait to send this to the apple engineer to see what he has to 
>> say.
>> Thanks for everyone's input, Wayne.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: John Baltutis
>> To: Power Macintosh G4 List
>> Sent: 5/7/03 4:09 PM
>> Subject: Re: [G4] Repair permissions documentation: was 10.2.5
>>
>> On 5/7/03,  "Wilkin, Wayne (Mass)" <Wayne.Wilkin at Staples.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>  Listen, do whatever you guys want. All is I am saying is that no one
>> can
>>>  find anywhere on Apples site where it says that it is ok to repair
>>>  permissions on the boot drive while booted from that same drive. Now
>> before
>>>  you say anything I also know that you can't find any documentation
>> that
>>>  recommends what I am saying either.
>>>
>> Really? This Apple document
>> <http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106712> (which, IMHO,
>>
>
>
- -
Brooks Graham
brooksgraham at mac.com
http://www.brooksgraham.com/

"A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something."

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