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Re: Sierra Upgrade Questions

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On 2017-02-21, Fred Moore <fmoore@gfcn.huh> wrote:
> On 2/20/17 3:41 p, Jolly Roger wrote:
>>
>> No such problems here in many years.
>
> Thanks for the info. As to 'many years', I have had Apple's installers 
> cause perm problems in 10.9 (repair perms before an update; run only an 
> Apple update; rerun perm repair; find/repair numerous bad perms).

No. That "problem" isn't really a problem; and isn't caused by Apple
installers anyway. I've posted this before here, but apparently you
never read it:

Disk Utility's Repair Permissions function isn't as magical a tool as a
lot of people seem to assume. It's a very simple tool that is meant to
reset the states of ownership and permissions of *only* those files
listed in the receipts of specific software in the receipts folder. This
receipts folder is located at /Library/Receipts in Mac OS X versions
prior to 10.6, and was moved to /private/var/db/receipts starting with
version 10.6.

Repair Permissions reads the contents of each receipt in the receipts
folder to find out which files and folders it should examine. Receipts
are typically created by software installers that use the Mac OS X
built-in /Applications/Utilities/Installer program to install a software
package, though they may be placed into the receipts folder by other
means as well. Receipts typically contain a "Bill of Materials" (BOM)
file that lists each important file and folder in the installed software
package, along with the expected ownership and permissions those files
and folders, according to the install package. Note that Repair
Permissions examines only those files listed by the BOM in each of these
receipts, which means the files in your home folder and the files in the
local domain (/Library for instance) are *not* examined. 

Also, the Repair Permissions tool has a rather serious design flaw: it
does not know how to resolve cases where multiple receipts list the same
file or folder with differing ownership and permissions. This actually
happens fairly frequently, particularly when more than one software
package installs and uses a shared library or other system resource that
happens to be used by another software package. If there are multiple
receipts that list a given file or folder, and the expected ownership
and permissions differ between those two receipts, Repair Permissions
will dutifully encounter the first receipt, change the ownership and
permissions to honor that receipt, then encounter the second receipt and
change the ownership and permissions to honor the second receipt. This
typically manifests itself in Disk Utility's Repair Permissions log as a
file or folder that never seems to be actually repaired, flipping back
and forth between two states.

-- 
E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my ravenous SPAM filter.
I often ignore posts from Google. Use a real news client instead.

JR

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Thread

Sierra Upgrade Questions Otto Pylot <otto@bogus.address.com> - 2017-02-19 11:38 -0800
  Re: Sierra Upgrade Questions dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson) - 2017-02-20 09:03 +1300
    Re: Sierra Upgrade Questions "Andre G. Isaak" <agisaak@gm.invalid> - 2017-02-19 21:27 -0700
      Re: Sierra Upgrade Questions Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> - 2017-02-20 05:04 +0000
        Re: Sierra Upgrade Questions gtr <xxx@yyy.zzz> - 2017-02-19 21:15 -0800
    Re: Sierra Upgrade Questions Fred Moore <fmoore@gfcn.huh> - 2017-02-20 15:28 -0500
      Re: Sierra Upgrade Questions Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> - 2017-02-20 20:41 +0000
        Re: Sierra Upgrade Questions Fred Moore <fmoore@gfcn.huh> - 2017-02-21 16:33 -0500
          Re: Sierra Upgrade Questions nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> - 2017-02-21 17:04 -0500
          Re: Sierra Upgrade Questions Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> - 2017-02-22 00:04 +0000
            Re: Sierra Upgrade Questions Fred Moore <fmoore@gfcn.huh> - 2017-02-23 14:45 -0500
              Re: Sierra Upgrade Questions nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> - 2017-02-23 15:01 -0500
      Re: Sierra Upgrade Questions nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> - 2017-02-20 16:02 -0500
        Re: Sierra Upgrade Questions Fred Moore <fmoore@gfcn.huh> - 2017-02-21 16:33 -0500
          Re: Sierra Upgrade Questions nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> - 2017-02-21 17:04 -0500
          Re: Sierra Upgrade Questions Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> - 2017-02-22 00:05 +0000
  Re: Sierra Upgrade Questions nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> - 2017-02-19 15:10 -0500
    Re: Sierra Upgrade Questions Otto Pylot <otto@bogus.address.com> - 2017-02-19 13:17 -0800

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