Permissions Database disappeared

Question

Hello,
My iMac hung up on shutdown, I just had the spinning wheel for about 10 minutes. The startup drive was very full. I forced the machine to shutdown by hlding down the power button. Upon restart it seems that a few permission problems have appeared: I cannot access my idisk (it says the password is incorrect, I cannot access my shared folder (it asks for the password). I went to disk utility to repair permissions, it ran repair permissions which lasted for about 3 seconds and says it's all fine. Repair permissions on my machine usually takes about 10 minutes at least. It seems that my permissions database has been reset somehow. How can I rebuild it?
Thank you.
-cauri

Answer 1

When the act of repairing permissions takes no more than a few seconds or two, it's a symptom of exactly what you figured it must be: the permissions database isn't readable.
The permissions database is called "a.receiptdb," and it resides in the "Library/Receipts/db" directory. The files located in the nearby "Library/Receipts/boms" directory are the source for generating the database.
If any of the .bom files are missing, I won't be able to help you. If, on the other hand, you're experiencing the same problem I did, here's what what worked for me:
cd /Library/Receipts
sudo chown -R _installer:wheel boms
sudo chown -R _installer:admin db
If you're not comfortable using the Terminal, I'm sorry to say I don't have anything less .. um .. geeky. I tried to figure a way to do it all in the Finder, but using the "Get Info" window to change owners & permissions is too limited to work.