[Ham-Mac] Who is *NOT* upgrading to Panther?

[Dick Rucker]

on 10/28/03 8:16 PM, harris ruben at formsmaven@comcast.net wrote:

> <Have you repaired file permissions?>
> 
> What is this and how do you do it?

Since Mac OS X is built on top of a Unix system, the user permissions
associated with every Unix file (and there are LOTS of them) must be set
correctly in order for the system to run properly.

For several reasons, most of which I don't understand, these permissions can
get tampered with over time.

For example, if you ever boot from an OS 9 volume with an OS X volume
mounted and if OS 9 ever has an occasion to use any of the files on the OS X
volume, it will likely leave the user permissions of those files scrambled.

That's because OS 9 was not built to deal with these.  That's one reason why
one should always run OS 9 apps inside Classic.  One of the jobs Classic has
is to keep OS 9 from unintentionally doing harm to Unix file headers.

The way to repair Unix file permissions is to launch "Disk Utility" in the
Applications/Utilities directory.

If you're running OS X 10.2 (Jaguar), select the First Aid tab, select the
OS X volume to be checked, and click on Repair Disk Permissions.

If you're running OS X 10.3 (Panther), select OS X volume in the left hand
frame and click on Repair Disk Permissions under the right hand frame.

The version that came with Panther is much improved and fixes at least one
confusing bug in the Jaguar version.  If the latter is the one you use, run
it until the only permission reported to be corrrected has to do with a Unix
"man" file.  What happens if you continue is that it gets set back to the
way it was before -- endless loop.

So at that point, the repair is complete.  Exit Disk Utility and see if that
makes the problem bugging you go away.

> NUM shows me a "serious" error when I run it from OS X, and tells me
> to run it from the CD (9.2), BUT when I do, it comes up with NO
> errors.
> 
> Maybe that's my problem.

Norton Utilities has been flaky since OS X was first introduced.  I've had
trouble with it before, and Norton says that it is not ready for OS X 10.3
yet, so I don't use it any more.
 
> I've ordered the new TechTools, but it's not here yet.

I haven't seen it yet.  Let us know what your experience with it is.
 
Dick Rucker, KM4ML