Is Permissions Repair STILL Necessary In Today's World?

[Amie]

I have been repairing permissions via Disk Utility for the past 8 yrs....... well not CONSTANTLY! LOL When I had my old iBook G4 and running Panther I was told to repair permissions periodically and ESPECIALLY before and after installing software, so that's what I've been doing. NOW........ I got this new MacBook Air (whooooo!) and running Snow Leopard. I know a lot of things have chanced since the old Panther days and I'm just wondering is running permissions repair still a good idea every now and then and before/after installing software..... or just a waste of time and computer energy?

Please share your thoughts on this..........

Thanks,
Amie

 

[Satcomer]

Depends. If you keep you mac on all the time then no. Then log rotation cron job is now in launchd. However that is little deeper than you probably would like.

To see is logs are boing turn open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal and copy this code:

ls -al /var/log/*.out

Then hist the return button. Is will print out something that looks like this:

-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  1252522 May 23 11:57 /var/log/daily.out
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel     5146 May 23 11:57 /var/log/monthly.out
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel     8091 May 23 11:57 /var/log/weekly.out

Then date shows when the log was rotated. Don't worry I manually brought them all to date earlier this morning running my 3 month system maintenance. Also with this new air follow the steps in the Apple document Apple Portables: Calibrating your computer's battery for best performance & Your New Notebook. Follow these steps to get the best out of your battery.

Now with Permissions that all depends. Third party programming from small developers can really mess up Permissions in OS X. You won't have to repair Permissions so much anymore but about once every three months and before OS X updates still might be good practice if you install a lot of third party software. Pay no attention to the constant Java Permission fixes, they are false and will show how old Java really is and IMHO should be replaced .

 

[Amie]

Actually, I repair permissions using Mac OS's Disk Utility - I don't use 3rd party software for that. However....... every time I repair permissions I get a really LONG list of stuff. I have done some research on this and Apple states that these messages can be safely ignored so I guess it's okay? It still bothers me though.

 

[Giaguara]

I'd recommend OnyX (or Yasu) for system maintenance.
Disk Utility can do repairing permissions, but OnyX does a lot more. Clean caches, change some preferences, add your name/phone/email to the login screen for security purposes etc.

 

[Amie]

Thank you! Installed Onyx. Some of the features look a bit too complex for me. I have no idea what they mean, so I will just stay out of that area. LOL If I just use it once or twice a month for the "Cleaning" feature and execute the system cache, user cache, internet cache and clean those out........would that be sufficient enough to keep my computer running smooth and keep the space/speed clean? I also installed Flush to remove flash cookies as well. Are those 2 apps are enough for good maintenance?

Of course I repair permissions via Disk Utility and make sure the cron jobs run via Maintidget also.

Does this cover it?

Thanks again.