I have an application that keeps asking me for the registration code every time I open it. The application functions properly, but on the next opening, same request.

The developer said I should enter the following into Terminal, which I am willing to do if it is not too broad and encompassing of a command. They said it would repair permissions on the boot disk.

sudo /usr/libexec/repair_packages --repair --standard-pkgs --volume /

Safe? Equivalently do it with Repair Permissions in OnyX?

repair_packages is an Apple tool for making sure that the permissions and flags on a package (a sort of record of a program's installation) are correct.

It will not harm anything. At worst it will do nothing. At best it can repair certain kinds of troubles with installed software.

Thanks for the feedback. Ran it, no problem, but did not fix the original issue. Back to the developer.

Just for the record, the developer suggested deleting the preference file for this application and that solved the problem.

That's a fairly common fix on the mac. It's pretty standard that if your prefs files doesn't exist, you make a new one.

Newer OS X has an evil thing called "CFPREFSD", a daemon that runs in the background and serves as a "buffer" for prefs reads and writes. I suspect this is to help with wear leveling SSDs. If an app elects to write a pref value every second (no change, same value over and over) the prefsd will just cache the change and only write it to file once the app lays off the trigger for awhile. So don't be terribly surprised if one grows back 10-20 seconds AFTER you have quit the app and THEN deleted the prefs file. I was working on a prefs corruption problem with remote desktop last fall and this was really grinding my gears, UNfixing the prefs file after I fixed it. So... you may need to wait awhile, or even reboot the computer sometimes. It doesn't bother files until you launch the app, so if you haven't launched it since login you should be able to delete it. But you may have problems deleting it right after you've quit the app.

(segway... keychain has the exact same issue, and is MUCH more persistent and problematic about it, persisting even after logout and typically requiring moving (but not deleting!) the keychain files and then RESTARTING before you can shake the pitbull daemon off the file and delete it)