Repair Permissions Utility

[Thomas S. England]

In 10.2.6 I notice that among the items in my Utility Folder is one name "Repair Privileges." The icon apparently is a lock.

What does it do?

For me, when I try to launch it, I get a message saying that it has quit.

Doing an info, I see that it was last modified in 1970, which I believe predates OS X. That confuses me. Why it is still there?

[bil207]

Thomas,

Repair Permissions is a utility for repairing permissions in OS 10.1.5. It quits because it is not compatible with OS 10.2.
 Disk utility in OS 10.2.x.x now can repair permissions.

[kelly]

Hmm. I don't seem to have it myself.

Mac OS X: About the Repair Privileges Utility 1.1 and Download

http://docs.info.apple.com/article2.html?artnum=106900

"No longer checks files and directories in /private/var/run/.  This change eliminates any repeating messages in the Log that permissions were corrected for these files."

That's annoying. To get that every time.

Thanks for bringing it up.

Ooops. "Mac OS X 10.1.5 only".  

[pendragon]

Thomas, Not to worry that 1970 date. It is merely a Unix time/baseline reference...

"January 1, 1970 is the moment Unix computers recognize as zero-time.

The Unix epoch is midnight on January 1, 1970. It's important to remember that this isn't Unix's "birthday" -- rough versions of the operating system were around in the 1960s. Instead, the date was programmed into the system sometime in the early 70s only because it was convenient to do so..."

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,128...2,46651,00.html

Harv

[kps]

As bil207 pointed out, it's an old utility Apple posted prior to 10.2 and the DiskUtility update which now includes the "Repair Permissions" feature.

[taliesin]

Thank you, Harv, for that intriguing bit of info about the "Unix time/baseline reference".
I've had occasion to wonder about that date more than once. Good "old" TS for enlightenment.