Permissions weirdness

[Jay Boshara]

A week ago I repaired the permissions (using Disk Utility) on my clamshell
366 iBook SE which runs OS 10.2.3 with 320 MB of RAM.  I tried repairing
permissions again the other day and it seemed to repair the very same ones
that it repaired the first time.  I had other problems too, so yesterday I
reinitialized my hard drive, clean installed Jaguar, updated it to 10.2.3,
installed all my software, repaired permissions, then ran an fsck (which
came out clean), and my computer was running smoothly again.  I just
repaired permissions again, and it seemed to repair the very same
permissions AGAIN!  What the hell is going on here?  Why don't permissions
repairs stick?  Below is a cut-and-paste of the permissions repaired (I
apologize for the length, but I'm flummoxed and have nowhere else to go):

2003-01-21 23:29:52 -0600 - Repair of privileges has started
Permissions differ on ./System/Library/Caches, should be drwxr-xr-x , they
are drwxrwxrwx  
Owner and group corrected on ./System/Library/Caches
Permissions corrected on ./System/Library/Caches
We are using special permissions for the file or directory
./System/Library/Filesystems/hfs.fs/hfs.util.  New permissions are 33261
User differs on ./private/var/db/locate.database, should be 0, owner is -2
Permissions differ on ./private/var/db/locate.database, should be -rw-r--r--
, they are -r--r--r--
Owner and group corrected on ./private/var/db/locate.database
Permissions corrected on ./private/var/db/locate.database
Group differs on ./private/var/run/utmp, should be 0, group is 1
Owner and group corrected on ./private/var/run/utmp
Permissions corrected on ./private/var/run/utmp
Permissions differ on ./Library/Caches, should be drwxrwxrwt , they are
drwxrwxrwx  
Owner and group corrected on ./Library/Caches
Permissions corrected on ./Library/Caches
2003-01-21 23:46:13 -0600 - The privileges have been repaired on the
selected volume.