[workerbee]

I've been recently hit by the "Finder window setting won't stick" bug -- my /Applications folder will not under any circumstances keep the settings I want it to have (icon view, label to the right, keep arranged by name, colour background).

I've deleted the stupid .DS_store file using PathFinder and fixed all permissions in the terminal several times over, and still this is too much to ask from "The World's Most Advanced Operating System (tm)".

I'm beginning to wonder: is it time for a system re-install? (If so: how's this so very much different from Windoze which we all like to gloat about?)

Or is something borked with the permissions either on the /applications folder and/or its .DS_store file? What owner and group should the two have?

I've recently installed Burn me again Sam, which possibly mucked around with permissions and stuff -- the two folders it installed data in (/applications and /usr/local/bin/) had to have their permissions fixed I think. Pacifist shows that all files in its installer pkg have the owner "502" -- does this change anything on my system (I'm apparently 501) when installing? Are .DS_Store files inside the installer package installed as well?

Sorry for asking stupid questions... any help appreciated.

[utidjian]

The correct owner group for /Applications is root admin, respectively. The perms on /Applications should be 0775 (this is right after a repair permissions run). 0775 translates to rwxrwxr-x.

Userid 501 is perfectly normal if you were the first user setup to use the machine. Each additional user after the "system owner" is incremented numerically 502, 503,... and so on. If there is no second user (id=502) it is very unlikely that the BMAS program installed itself under that user id. You can check this by doing an 'ls -l /Applications' in the Terminal.

[workerbee]

Originally posted by utidjian:
The correct owner group for /Applications is root admin, respectively. The perms on /Applications should be 0775 (this is right after a repair permissions run). 0775 translates to rwxrwxr-x.

Thanks a lot. Everything looks OK in PathFinder and the Terminal. The Finder is still unable to remember my settings. It's no biggie, of course, but I find this highly frustrating, and it really does not do much to install confidence in the OS.