[Cadaver]

Anyone have an application they like for automating the repair of file permissions?
I'd like to have it done automatically once a week; presently I just do it manually.
Something more detailed than "just add it to the crontab," would be appreciated. While I have no doubt that would work, its not something I know off hand how to do.

I've looked at utils like Cocktail and TinkerTool, but I don't see that they offer this function. Suggestions?

[tooki]

There's really no need to repair permissions unless you're having problems that indicate a permissions problem.

tooki

[mikemako]

I think "Macaroni" has that ability.

[bergy]

I love Macaroni ... it makes my computing experience easier ..
Macaroni .. Just Set It and Forget It!
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/9633
Why should you have to remember to clean up your Mac every day, every week, and every month? Shouldn't a computer be able to remember for you?

Macaroni is a tool which handles regular maintenance for Mac OS X, including the Mac OS X repair privileges process as well as Unix-style maintenance. Without Macaroni, some of these tasks normally run in the middle of the night, and don't get run unless you leave your Mac on all night. Others don't run automatically at all, and won't happen unless you remember when they're due.

Macaroni remembers the schedule for you!

Macaroni runs these maintenance tasks on a regular schedule, regardless of when your Mac is on. If a scheduled maintenance task is not run when it's normally scheduled, Macaroni automatically ensures that it's run at the next opportunity, whenever the Mac is on.

Some other info on Repairing Permissions ..

Apple - Unix Maintenance & Repairing Permissions
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.h...onID=anonymous|44855325&kbhost=kbase.info.apple.com%3a80%2f

I generally Repair Permissions before any System Update as well as after.

Apple - How Repair Permissions Works
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25751

Apple - Troubleshooting Permissions Issues
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106712

Permission Repair: The Full Story
http://www.atomicbird.com/node/view/29

[Cadaver]

Originally posted by tooki:
There's really no need to repair permissions unless you're having problems that indicate a permissions problem.

tooki

I haven't yet tracked down why it happens, but for some reason on my G5 periodically the owner of my Applications folder will change, resulting in the need to enter an admin password whenever I add/delete anything. A permission repair fixes it right up.
Its a recent development - probably occurred after one of the recent OS X updates. Doesn't occur on my other two machines.

Regardless, I'll reinstall everything nice and neat when 10.4 comes out. Until then, this band-aid will do the trick.

Thanks for the Macaroni suggestions. I'll check it out.

[ManOfSteal]

Macaroni =

[yukon]

WOW, what's with people pushing that application?

type in a terminal window, the < and > are my comments and instructions.-
sudo pico /etc/crontab
<welcome to the pico editor, the commands are listed on the bottom, the arch is the control button. scroll to the bottom. paste what's below this in>
30 4 * * 6 root /usr/sbin/diskutil repairPermissions /
<keycommand control-x, then press the letter "y", then enter. then close the window>

It will now repair permissions once a week, every week, with no user intervention ever again. also available in a different way at-
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...41117193822290

This simply configures the system to run maintenance on itself. If macaroni is easier, then pay the 9$USD to use a third party tool, and give the closed source app your root password. You can see my bias, but that's my opinion.

[Ruahrc]

does adding to/editing the crontab allow you to have the maintenince run automatically upon wake/boot, etc?

The way I understand it, by default your cron jobs will not run unless your mac is powered on and running at like 5am every night. If it is off or asleep, the jobs will not be run, period.

With Macaroni, the cron jobs can be set to run upon the next available opportunity, for example if you sleep your mac at night, they will run when you next wake the computer up. Various options are available for example you can set the cron jobs to run only after an idle period of 5 mins, to ensure that the jobs will not affect performance while you are using your mac. Also you can have them not run if your powerbook is on battery power to save energy when you are on the go.

That is why I got Macaroni, because it can run the cron jobs automatically and still allow you to sleep your computer at night and not worry that the jobs will never run. You can also add your own jobs to do specific tasks as well.

Ruahrc

[yukon]

Originally posted by Ruahrc:
The way I understand it, by default your cron jobs will not run unless your mac is powered on and running at like 5am every night. If it is off or asleep, the jobs will not be run, period. That is why I got Macaroni, because it can run the cron jobs automatically and still allow you to sleep your computer at night and not worry that the jobs will never run. You can also add your own jobs to do specific tasks as well.

Yup, cron is a server program, part of Unix. It's meant to run maintenance (or any task you need schedualed) when no one will be using the system.....an application that runs the scripts as soon as you power the machine on or try to log in etc, that's not very good at all, you're trying to use your system.

And to reply, when I gave those instructions, I had to check two of my config files and use both in the reply - I use something called Anacron. It's another open source program, quite standard now, it runs the scripts after the number of hours of days etc has passed in total rather than passed on this powerup. Cron assumes it's running on a server that will be up all the time, Anacron will be good for your powerbook or for a desktop computer that can't be left on overnight.

You can download an OS X Installer.app package at http://www.alastairs-place.net/anacron.html , where there are instructions on how to uninstall it. If that whole "root password" thing I said really speaks to you, you can use Fink to install anacron-
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...31111110802488

To configure anacron to do the permissions fix, replace when I said "pico /etc/crontab" with "pico /etc/anacrontab", and paste in the following instead of the other pasted text-
7 15 cron.weekly2 /usr/sbin/diskutil repairPermissions /

[Ruahrc]

Yeah but if Anachron is set to run the jobs after X hours of use (uptime?) then won't it still be running the jobs while you use your computer, since the only way to acrue that uptime is to use the computer?

Anyhow for the little jobs like daily or weekly I don't ever notice them run, and just have them run at first wake. For the lengthier jobs like repair permissions or remove localizations I have my PB wake up at 4:00am on Sunday (via energy saver pane) and configure Macaroni to run the jobs then. then the PB sleeps at 4:20am so it's like it was when I went to sleep.

Ruahrc

PS what is the big deal about giving your root password to Macaroni? You need to give your root password to Software Update, and many installer applications too. Unless you are paranoid that the installer is secretly stealing your CC info or deleting your system files while it works...

[yukon]

if Anachron is set to run the jobs after X hours of use (uptime?) then won't it still be running the jobs while you use your computer, since the only way to acrue that uptime is to use the computer?

I suppose, but it's also possible that Cron will run while I'm on the machine at 12pm. In general, it means it runs the tasks when they need to be run....Macaroni setting things to happen when you start the machine up etc, that's 100% likely to run maintenance when you're doing something.

Dunno, I don't notice when Repair Permissions runs, I used to when I had cron doing it, mainly because I knew the hour, but now I haven't noticed it since anacron. I just set it, and never have to worry about repairing permissions or uptime (for cron) again, permissions problem solved permanently for free without risk. Macaroni is a third party application you have to install and pay for and trust etc.

what is the big deal about giving your root password to Macaroni? You need to give your root password to Software Update, and many installer applications too. Unless you are paranoid

Well, "paranoia", that's the whole reason for having the password, that something will do something bad. I don't know who made Macaroni, I don't know what the author may have added to the program, and I can probably never know even if I pay for a copy. Maybe I can't run trusted applications all the time on OS X, but I can prevent them from altering the system. There's a few dozen "system maintenance" applications, such apps have always been a bit shady, probably half on versiontracker are applescript studio apps that run the command I put in anacrontab, most of it is one big circle jerk (I thought that was an argument term, searched google, I need a better phrase).

This isn't meant to insult the authors of any maintenance programs, there are quality ones like Techtool Pro and DiskWarrior that do verifiably good work. It's simply that I trust cron more than I trust any "system software maintenance" application. If Macaroni has a bug that wipes the system, it has the authority to do so....Cron could have such a bug theoretically, but it hasn't been found in the few decades it's been around and viewed by thousands of programmers, and no one has reported it since it's been installed in OS X. Macaroni could indeed send your credit card numbers, the author may already have it if you paid them (I dunno how you pay for Macaroni, just a thought), theoretically it could do anything you can think of, you can read the source to cron yourself.

And who wants to run a program named after a noodle? Cron sounds like Tron, and Tron was cool! Ok, those don't matter, but I just see no reason to go out of your way with a "utility" when telling cron to do it is free/trustable/easy, if you worry about OS X's logs getting over dozens of kilobytes larger because you run a powerbook, then install Anacron that I linked (IMHO Apple should use Anacron anyway).

[Ruahrc]

I'm not sure you completely understand the behavior of Macaroni? It will run a cron script if it is due at the next possible opportunity. So if my PB sleeps overnight and I wake it up in the morning, Macaroni will notice that the daily maintenence is due and will wait for the next opportunity to run.

Like I said you can specify Macaroni to not run jobs until the system has sat idle for X minutes- so I can wake the PB up, get to work right away, finish my work, and leave the PB sitting there, and after X minutes of inactivity (because I am gone) THEN Macaroni will run the jobs. So it's not 100% that the jobs will get done when I run them, in fact it is much less because it waits till the system has sat idle for a while. Unless you use your computer 100% of the time you are at it and then immediately sleep it when you are done (in which case, without setting automatic bootup/wakeup for maintenence, a cron job will ALWAYS run while you are using it, since the only time the computer is active you are using it).

Still, from what I understand of these cron modifications and anacron, I still could not replicate what Macaroni does. Editing crontab only adds the functionality of running repair permissions as a cron job. Using Anacron only monitors whether or not cron jobs are being run, and if they are not, anacron will force those jobs to run. The problem again though is that anacron must be either run at boot, by a cron job, or explicitly. So I would STILL need to take some sort of action to run these jobs. Lastly, from reading AtomicBird's website, I believe that Macaroni acts in much the same manner as anacron, monitoring the activity of cron itself, and forcing it to run if needed. It uses the standard OS X commands to invoke cron and also things like repair permissions.

You have some good points about trusting applications but I guess everyone draws the line in a different place. I mean if you think about it you have to trust somebody at some point- if you go out to eat you are trusting the cook to not undercook or poison your food- or when you drive your car or ride the bus you trust the manufacturer of that vehicle to make it so it doesn't crash. I guess I never heard anything bad about Macaroni so I figured it was trustworthy enough to try and use. What makes Apple's stuff more trustworthy than Macaroni? Because they are bigger and have more money? Then I guess the federal government is most trustworthy of all (even though you are Canadian and Canada rocks )? If you only trust software originally written 30 years ago and not proven to be buggy then you must have some pretty out of date software

Anyways I guess the beauty of it all is that I can choose to go with Macaroni and you can choose to go with anachron, and we can agree to disagree on the issue. Besides I prefer mm mm pasta over some cheesy 80's movie! Besides cron most likely is really named after the greek root meaning time.

Ruahrc

[yukon]

'm not sure you completely understand the behavior of Macaroni? It will run a cron script if it is due at the next possible opportunity. So if my PB sleeps overnight and I wake it up in the morning, Macaroni will notice that the daily maintenence is due and will wait for the next opportunity to run....specify Macaroni to not run jobs until the system has sat idle for X minutes

Nah, I've never used Macaroni, I'm just going from what people have said in the thread. I wouldn't want the jobs listed in the crontab running as soon as I log on. Didn't know about the idle functionality, that's nice, I don't really notice when cron runs now with anacron though (which also runs the jobs when they are due). Perhaps Macaroni is polling for user usage, that might slow you down actually.

So it's not 100% that the jobs will get done when I run them

You actually run cron jobs? Like manually too? I saw that in MacJanitor, thought it quite funny. Maybe you might not, but I bet others do, I kind of find the little hysteria about cron doing "system maintenance" funny.

mean if you think about it you have to trust somebody at some point

Yeah, it's all about advantages. I run iCab, though I've never seen the source and never will, if I _really_ cared about it entirely, if I thought Apple had a deal with the NSA etc, then I'd be running Linux (well, probably OBSD or FreeBSD, maybe even LFS). But there's always a risk/advantage calculation. I don't have to run everything so I try not to...out of 26 apps on my dock, I believe I believe 9 are opensource. Although, I've given only two of them my root or admin password, System Prefs and Terminal.app, if I can avoid giving it to shareware then I certainly will.

What makes Apple's stuff more trustworthy than Macaroni? Because they are bigger and have more money? If you only trust software originally written 30 years ago and not proven to be buggy then you must have some pretty out of date software

Well, yes, I do trust Apple more because they are big and have money. They have more programmers, they don't have a "if your computer explodes from this program then forget about us" thing, the US government now trusts OS X, and I can look at the backend of their system and look for trojans in Cron ;-)

And really out of date software, not necessarily. Cron has been in BSD for a few dozen years (manpage doesn't say when it was added, sorry, google's no help), and yet everyone runs it now in their "modern operating system", if you run BSD then you trust "30 year old software", it has been updated since then though ;-)

Anyways I guess the beauty of it all is that I can choose to go with Macaroni and you can choose to go with anachron, and we can agree to disagree on the issue.

Sure, that's fine. I still don't see the problem though. Cron is free, unless you're on the "classic" macos or Windows (it's task scheduler there), you have it already, you don't have to paypal anything. You can trust it, everyone else does, you can compile it yourself if you care to for some reason. With a few simple commands that you don't even have to understand, you can make "permissions repair" and Macaroni irrelevant. If you can't run the computer all night and either really worried about the extra kilobytes of log space or you use the "locate" command a lot, then install anacron, it's free again and trusted, there's even a nice doubleclick installer you can use. Once you use the commands above, then you don't have to worry about it or even think of it ever again.

But hey, go ahead. Pay for a utility, for something you don't need, give it your root password, waste your time rotating log files. It doesn't "make it faster", it doesn't "clear out RAM" (that's actually a bad side effect), it gives you maybe a couple kilobytes of disk space. I don't see how the position could hold up in a debate or argument (unless the programmer is starving, or you're running apache on your up-and-down powerbook (why?)), but I've done illogical things before too. If you need it to schedule something in the OS X GUI and Macaroni can do that, fine, just don't use running periodic tasks to justify it.