Repair Permissions - "Info does not esist"

Question

Just curious - Whenever I run Repair Permissions, the first line of the resulting log says "parent directory ./Users/Shared/SC Info does not exist". What is this telling me? The computer seems to be running just fine, and no other problem areas show up on the log. Thanks for the help.
iBook G4   Mac OS X (10.4.4)  

Answer 1

Hi, R.G.
Well, this could lead to long and tedious UNIX tutorial. The bottom line is that you need not be concerned about this message when you run Repair Permissions from Terminal.
The info you posted is a directory listing. It basically says that the Users > Shared > SC Info folder (directory in UNIX parlance) contains a file called SC Info.sdb. The data from the ls command you issued provides details about the ownership, permissions, size, etc of that folder (line ending in "."), its enclosing folder (line ending in ".." — the Shared folder), and the file(s) contained in the SC Info folder (line ending in "SC Info.sidb").
The data in the first four columns is explained in Figure 2 of "Troubleshooting permissions issues in Mac OS X", though one also needs to read the earlier part of that document to understand what columns 1, 3, and 4 are about.
The rest of the columns are explained in the section entitled "The Long Format" of man (UNIX manual) page for the ls (list directory contents) command.
If you open the Macintosh HD > Users > Shared folder in Finder, you won't see SC Info folder because the "Invisible" file system attribute for that folder has been enabled in order to hide it.
If I execute the same ls command I provided to you earlier (ls -al /Users/Shared/SC\ Info/), I see:<pre>total 0
drwxrwxrwx 3 drsmoke wheel 102 May 26 2004 .
drwxrwxrwt 31 root wheel 1054 Mar 17 05:56 ..
-rw-rw-rw- 1 drsmoke wheel 0 May 26 2004 SC Info.sidb</pre>The zero (0) highlighted in red in my output indicates the file SC Info.sidb is zero bytes in size. This is because no content (songs, etc.) has been purchased from the iTMS on this computer. That file on your Mac has a non-zero size since you've purchased songs or other content from iTMS.
None of the Apple Developer documents address the specific purpose of the SC Info.sidb. In investigating this file, and comparing it with the same file on some other Macs, it was found that this file's size is non-zero if one has purchased content from iTMS and a little more digging led to the understanding that this contains descriptor keys, perhaps related to authorizing a Mac to play purchased music.
If you really want to get into the UNIX command line, check out the UNIX-related books I recommend in my "Learning About Mac OS X" FAQ. Terminal is powerful and is especially useful in exploring the underpinnings of Mac OS X, accessing facilities that have yet to be exposed in the GUI (Graphical User Interface), as well as troubleshooting. One should study on it a bit since, if used incorrectly, certain Terminal commands can erase your hard drive or otherwise render one's system unusable.
I hope the info above explains this better.
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X
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