Repairing disk permissions keeps giving same message

Question

I routinely verify my HD and repair disk permissions. The latter often indicates repairs are needed, especially after installation of new software or updates (I repair before and after). But once repaired, if I verify the permissions they come out ok -- i.e., no repairs are needed. Until just recently. I am now getting the following message after repairing permissions:
Verify permissions for “Macintosh HD”
Determining correct file permissions.
Permissions differ on ./private/var/log/secure.log, should be -rw------- , they are -rw-r-----
Permissions verification complete
The privileges have been verified or repaired on the selected volume
If I verify permissions after repairing this, I get the same message again. So the repair is not holding. I am running OS X 10.4.11 and I recall that on earlier OS's there were sometimes innocuous repairs that kept being required, but that were not really a problem. But under 10.4.11 a repair has usually been good, and clears the deck. Until now. Any ideas?
Update: I am no longer having this problem. Possibly I was clicking on the verify permissions button instead of the repair button. I have used DU many times, so this would be a fairly boneheaded thing to do at this point. Maybe familiarity breeds carelessness? In any event, I often get the message above when I check disk permissions, and I would be curious to know why it is one of the more common repairs needed. So let's make that my question instead...
TIA
Message was edited by: Drake Bradley

Answer 1

Not to worry about it, that secure.log is a common one for that.
Repair Permissions checks Library>Receipts to find out the proper Permissions, that file's Permissions may exist in more than one and/or some OS component doesn't know the new/latest permissions when using it.