External disk - repair permissions

Question

It seems the permissions on my HD need to be repaired.
Unfortunately I have lost the Repair disk during an international move.
I still have the install disk - so I tried to install OS 10.6 onto an external drive. The intention was to boot from the external drive and repair permisions on the MacBook HD.
The installation kept showing the external disk as having not been ejected correctly, which is not correct. Anyway, I erased all partitions on this external disk, using Disk Utility, did a 7 pass erase, and then also ran the repair disk function too; Disk Utilityshowed that there were no issues with this external disk. However, I still got the same result from the OS installation program, that the external disk had not been ejected correctly. I went around in the circle a number of times before giving up.
Now I am at a loss how to make the external boot disk to repair permisions on the computer HD.
I know in the distant past it was possible to just copy the System folder to an external drive and it would boot; but I was told this no longer works.
Any get around this issue or a solution would be most welcome.
Thank you

Answer 1

It seems that there is a theory that you don't need to repair permissions anymore.
Correct.  It is unnecessary and doen't repair your permissions anyway.
About Disk Utility's Repair Disk Permissions feature
When files loose their connection with the program that created them is one example why permisions need to be repaired.
No, that is an indication that Launch Services has got corrupted or confused and maybe it needs rebuilding.  Repair permissions does nothing to the launch services data base.
The last time I had issues was 18 months ago and running repair disk permissions solved all the instability problems; I don't think I was dillusional about this; so as I have warnings to repair disk permissions and instability issues I what I want to repair the permissions; that is irrespective of any currrent thought that this isn't necessary.
You believe what you want.  Read the link about repairing permissions and what it does.
The repair disk has a minimal system and disk utilities on it that allows you to boot from the DVD and repair the internal HD. In the early days you could just drag a minimal of certain files from the system onto a flopy or latter a CD together with disk repair and it would do the job. I lost my repair disk, so I want to create a system on an external drive which together with Disk Utility so I can repair the permissions. Or even make a DVD with a minimum system and disk utilities.
There is no such thing as a "repair disk".   You have installer dvd's that came with your hardware or the recovery partition that is part of Lion.  You boot it and run Disk Utility to verify/repair, and yes, if you insist, repair permissions.  Or you boot from another bootable disk and use its Disk Utilities to repair/verify your drives from there.  That is because you cannot repair the drive you are currently booted from.
You can't repair permissions from the HD that has issues, ("If necessary (which is seldom), permissions should be repaired from the selfsame disk.') well at least up to OS10.6, you need an external system to do this, i.e. external HD or DVD. Apple genius bars use external drives to do this; being in Spain there is only one of those some 3+ hours away; a final option if I can't get success.
I basically just said this immediately above.
As I mentioned when I tried to install OS10.6 onto an external drive I had issues doing this, as covered in my initial email.
First a 7-pass erase it a complete waste of time when a simple erase will do.  Second I think the you are getting "disk ejected improperly" because you may have one of those enclosures that has a tendency to go off line on its own, which of course is indeed ejecting the disk incorrectly.  I'm guessing on this last point of course but it seems reasonable to me.