(If you disable SIP to use certain third-party software or unsigned kernel extensions, you’re on you own now.) System Integrity Protection (SIP), also known as rootless mode, prevents modification to these files.ĭuring El Capitan’s beta testing, one round of release notes from Apple explained the permissions removal from Disk Utility by noting that during software updates, any permission issues would be resolved by an installer, but that otherwise, there was no need. Even so, from all reports, permissions repairs had little real effect for years-it just made us feel better.īut in El Capitan, any system file for which Repair Permissions would have restored these settings can no longer be modified during normal operating. A printer driver with the wrong switches flipped might not be available to the system or the driver might be unable to access the printer settings file or temporary print queue directories. It made sense that repairing permissions on files for which OS X knew precisely what settings should be in place could fix random faults. In OS X (and in all Unix and related OSes), a file or directory’s permissions associate which kind of user can perform what kind of action: read, write, execute (run, like a program), and other attributes. The sworn-by advice for years by experienced OS X users and Apple alike was to run Disk Utility and click Repair Permissions as the first step in troubleshooting something gone wrong: a printer driver failing, an app’s strange behavior, a weird interface glitch? Repair permissions! Before digging into how to use the new setup, it’s important to note a key omission: Verify Permissions and Repair Permissions are gone.

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