Repairing Permissions

At the January 15 meeting, Linda told people how to repair the permissions under Mac OS X — something that the underlying UNIX operating system needs periodically. You can manually repair permission, or you can download a very inexpensive ($9.99) program called Macaroni from a Atomic Bird Software (www.atomicbird.com). Once you install Macaroni, it will preform a variety of necessary UNIX housekeeping tasks on a regular basic.

If you want to repair the permissions manually, here are the step-by-step directions:

1. Open the Applications folder.

2. Open the Utilities folder.

3. Double click on the program Disk Utility.

4. When Disk Utility opens, select (click once) on the name of your hard drive on the left-side of the window.

5. There is a white space on the right-side of the program window. Above it are four words: First Aid, Erase, RAID and Restore. Make sure that First Aid is highlighted.

6. Click on the button Repair Disk Permissions below the white space.

7. When you see Permissions Repair Complete you can quit the program.