Hi Sue, The "rule of thumb" that we recommend to our customers is to always repair permissions immediately following the installation of any software or software update, whether it be Apple or third party (non- Apple).
I believe Apple does recommend repairing permissions prior to any major OS update such as upgrading from OS X 10.3 to OS X 10.4 but only as a precautionary measure, along with the raft of other precautionary measures one is to take before any major upgrade (such as repairing directory damage or disconnecting firewire hard drives). Obviously, repairing permissions before and after is redundant. Not professing by any means to know it all, I'm rather curious by Lee's assertion that Apple's installers repair permissions on the fly. I'm not aware that they do anything of the sort. In fact, Apple produced some updates which installed by default with incorrect permissions. I recollect the update to iPhoto 4.0.3 as well as others installed with incorrect permissions. HP drivers are notorious for this as well although I have not checked lately. I believe ARD can batch repair permissions but only from the command line using Terminal. Ward Ward Oldham, MacDude MacTown 128 Breckenridge Lane Louisville, KY 40207 502-485-1243 ward at mactown.us http://www.mactown.us On Aug 9, 2005, at 11:13 AM, Sue Balmer wrote: > I am curious on the consensus of opinion - do you need to repair > permissions prior to installing updates? Apple support has told me > it is not necessary, however, I have see numerous posts on the > discussion groups at Apple maintaining you should always repair > permissions before and after any update. > > I volunteer at our elementary school's computer lab and with the > start of school tomorrow, we'll be deep in updates this week. The > school has over 75 eMacs, so while I would like to play it safe, it > really adds time to the process. We do have Apple Remote which I > plan on using to start updates on several machines at once, but I > don't believe I can batch the repair permissions part. (Please > correct me if I am wrong. All of my Apple education has been in > the line of fire, nothing formal, so I'm sure I have some huge > knowledge gaps.) Do I really need to spend the time necessary to > repair permissions both before and after the updates? What do I > risk if I don't? > > Thanks, > Sue > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.math.louisville.edu/pipermail/macgroup/attachments/20050809/5a3a9a69/attachment.html
