Why do so many items appear after repair permissions.

Question

Something that has never made sense to me is repair permissions. It is suggested that we repair permissions yet so many items reappear in verify. In my case a verify revealed 119 items of concern with one suid warning. Have run repair a number of times yet 60 items remain including the suid warning- Remote Management ARDAgent.
MBP with Snow Leopard 10.6.8

Answer 1

akashelby wrote:
Something that has never made sense to me is repair permissions.
No biggie. Simplifying matters a bit, Apple's Installer leaves behind a list of items installed. "Repair permissions" goes through the system software and checks it against the list. Where it finds that permissions differ, it resets them to the values in the list. Permissions get changed for various reasons, including poorly programmed software and users who know just enough to get into trouble. Fixing permissions is a step which does not require any expertise and, once started, does not require user interaction. That, and, as CT says, the black magic touch, is probably the reason it is so often recommended, even by tech support, although it probably works only in a small number of cases. There's no point in wasting time about the list of specific fixed permissions in this instance -- if Apple says ignore them, do just that. There's enough other stuff we need to worry about.
Now, as to your real problem --  "Finder doesn't find anything". You'll have to provide more details, but it sounds your problem is not so much with Finder as with Spotlight.