Apple Posts Note About Leopard Permissions Repair Warning
Apple Posts Note About Leopard Permissions Repair Warning
by , 5:10 PM EST, November 15th, 2007
Apple has published a possibly overlooked note regarding a warning some users may experience with Mac OS X Leopard, either 10.5 or 10.5.1. The message appears in Leopard's Disk Utility log window after repairing permissions.
Apple's support article # 306925 says that the following warning may appear after repairing disk permissions:
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/ARDAgent has been modified and will not be repaired.
Apple advised that the message is "accurate, but not a cause for concern."
Observer Comments
Thu Nov 15, 2007 8:31 pm Subject: Yes I have had this...
and suffered no ill effects...
I personally put it down to previous usage of VineServer and other non Apple VNC type stuff - whether that is the real cause is now open to question (I did a straight upgrade btw) but I have had no fallout from it - so I guess Apple are just saying like it is... True but harmless.
After installation (A&I) of OS 10.5, not only did Repair Permissions take 30 minutes to process, but I consistently got the Warning Notice that Apple has told us to ignore.
After installing the upgrade to 10.5.1, the Repair Permissions is reduced to 20 minutes, but I now have 10 SUID Warnings, all different file names, that "will not be repaired."
This is getting scary.
Fri Nov 16, 2007 12:29 am Subject: The much bigger note is in article 306907 - backup
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306907
Yes, Apple has finally come to terms that users must backup before any update. ANY update. It says:
"It is recommended that you backup your system prior to installing any updates."
This link appears in Software Update's description for 10.5.1, and the download from http://www.apple.com/swupdates/
You have been forewarned, and forearmed. If you don't backup, there WILL be consequences eventually. It is not a question of if but when. My FAQ explains this in more detail:
http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html
Permissions errors or not, if you don't backup, they can build if issues persist.
Uhhhh, what are you talking about? These warnings have nothing to do with backing up. After installing 10.5.1 and running repair permissions I got 9 of these warnings and no loss of data that I'm aware of. If these warnings are of no concern then we shouldn't be notified of them even if they are technically correct. But it would be nice to have repair permissions run in timely fashion.
Download the stand alone 10.5.1 installer from Apple's website and reapply it. I don't know why, but this gets rid of all those SUID warnings except the original one about the ARD agent. It also doesn't fix the 20%-ish progress bar for 5-10 minutes issue (with an estimated time of 1 minute remaining!).
Fri Nov 16, 2007 10:12 am Subject: Permissions repair if done wrong
Fri Nov 16, 2007 11:06 am Subject: Cocktail or OSX
QuoteHard Nard wrote:
I've always used Cocktail to repair permissions and it seems to work correctly under Leopard. Could it be just a problem with Apple, or are people having the permissions problem with other repairing applications?
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't Cocktail, and similar programs, just a front end for OSX's utilities?
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