Talk:Mac OS X Tiger/Installing Tiger

Repairing permissions has become one of those things that somehow gets recommended by the community as a great fix. It's really just something that helps to confuse users and make the whole process more complicated than it should be. It does have its uses, but is not a useful step at any point in the Mac OS X installation process.

For that matter, even if you recommend to do it once (just to make sure things run smoothly. It is a good time to schedule that sort of thing, you might say), you don't need to do it twice. Repair permissions checks the permissions of Apple-installed files to be sure they match what's on record. If this is done at the beginning, all the permissions on the drive will be correct. The installer will, by default, install the new files with correct permissions. Therefore, all the permissions are correct. Alternatively, say there are some incorrect permission and you don't repair before the install. After the installation, all the new files will be correct. Repair permission then checks the files against its database and repairs the ones left behind that are still incorrect (these files, by the way, even if they're of incorrect permissions, are not going to interfere with the success of the installation). All permissions are now correct. This is true either way after one install.

But that makes a short story long. The basic idea is, repair permissions does not need to be included in a guide to installing OS X, but if you insist on including it, at least don't have it twice.


 * The installation works as root, which means permissions are meaningless. That means, repairing permissions BEFORE reinstalling Tiger is a complete waste of time, it can't possibly have any effect. - (Tobberoth 09:10, 6 April 2007 (UTC))