Not "exactly" an existential question!

[gunug]

I just did some housekeeping on my Powerbook hard drive and have apparently misplaced some files but I can't really think of what they consisted of so I'm not even sure I can pose a valid question here!    I think it kind of starts with the line of doggerel when Applejack says "Permissions should be <such and such> they should be <such and such> does it change anything?  I guess the rest of it remains to be seen; am I missing something if I can't imagine the shape of it!  My collection of tools includes an apparently functional (with Leopard) version of Diskwarrior and I could do the verification test and see if it finds "familiar" looking files that are no longer in the current structure.  Should I then repair the directory if it seems important enough to me?  

[Paddy]

QUOTE

Should I then repair the directory if it seems important enough to me?

If DW reports that the directory is damaged, you should always repair it.

Why do you think you're missing files, BTW? (I'm not clear on why you think this...incorrect permissions are not an indication of missing files AFAIK)

[gunug]

I have used Applejack for a number of years now and it has worked well through Leopard (I've only used it on Snow Leopard a couple of times) but if it has a problem it is that the "AUTO"matic batch processing seems to want to do more than it should.  In this case I used the lowercase "auto" but I probably should have just done the FSCK and permissions to "fix" what needed to be fixed instead of all of the functions.  I have a backup image I made with Superduper but it's about a month old so all I have is a vague feeling that there are some things gone that should be in some unknown locations.  I think I'll do another backup onto a different drive and then go ahead and try to see whether Diskwarrior will find anything I've misplaced.  That is I'll do this after our trip to Minnesota and Wisconsin; I intend to take the laptop because the motels I'm staying at all have internet in the rooms.

The incorrect permissions is the error condition that I recall; Applejack said a lot of other things but they went by on the screen more quickly.  I'm thinking that what Applejack is saying that permissions are _ _ _ _ _ and they should be _ _ _ _ _ this means that it didn't do anything about these (I think you have to give it the "AUTO"matic setting to force the permission changes.  I kind of wonder why it "thinks" the permissions are wrong but this gives me the impression that maybe this is a default behavior and it doesn't force other changes either.  Maybe I didn't lose any files but the directory structure doesn't know where they're at!  

[Paddy]

Have you run DiskWarrior? If it reports directory errors, then the logical thing to do is fix them. The only directory errors that AppleJack will fix are the same ones that Disk Utility fixes.

AppleJack can mess up preference files, in that it will put any it *thinks* are corrupt in a special folder and it the application developer didn't use one of two formats for the permissions, AJ will think they're corrupt. So, running the Auto version may not be the way to go.

There are some permissions errors that always show up and are harmless. There's an Apple KB article about that if you look (I'm too tired right now...)