[OS X TeX] file permissions

[Siep Kroonenberg]

On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 12:04:29PM +0400, Daniel Becker wrote:
> Hallo -
> 
> what are the correct permissions for /usr/ and /usr/bin/ ? I used chmod -R 755 usr to fix a ruby complaint about a world writable directory in the search path and now updating MacTeX via TeX Live Utility doesn't work anymore. 

You shouldn't change permissions for system directories wholesale.
Normally, programs and directories are world-executable but other
files aren't.

I don't know how you could recover your system from such an action.

You can remove world-writability recursively from a directory tree
with a command

chmod -R o-w <directory name>

This would leave permissions unaffected for the owner user and the
owner group; it would leave read- and execute permissions unaffected
for everybody and all targeted files, but it would remove
writability for users not in the owner group.

-- 
Siep Kroonenberg