Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mass Deployment

Repair Permissions Using The Command Line In El Capitan

Repair permissions was unceremoniously removed from OS X in El Capitan. This staple of the Mac gurus toolkit disappeared. There was no 21 gun salute, there was no flaming casket sent out to sea and there was no sweet, sweet wake to get drunk at. Instead, there was pain. There was pain, because when the button disappeared, the need did not. Need proof? If you haven’t yet run it, let’s check your system to verify the permissions of the standard packages:

sudo /usr/libexec/repair_packages --verify --standard-pkgs --volume /

In the above command, we used the repair_packages binary, which has not changed in awhile. We then feed that the –verify option and the –standard-pkgs option, finally providing the volume of the current boot volume using –volume followed by the /. Pretty straight forward. Assuming there’s something to repair, the below will actually run that repair operation:

sudo /usr/libexec/repair_packages --repair --standard-pkgs --volume /

Where’s the sweet, sweet button? The rest of the screen is so darn lonely without it.

Screen Shot 2015-11-18 at 6.13.02 PM

And now that you know the command, feel free to throw it in your self service. That way users can do it without opening terminal or using an admin password!