Home Forums Mac Software Mac Operating Systems Permissions Error Message(s) - Displaypolicyd

I am running YOSEMITE on a MBPro which was installed within a couple of days of its release date. Things had been running fine. No odd permission repair messages.

Just recently - within the last week - the computer seems to start up as usual (i.e. chime, etc.). However, the progress bar reaches about the â…“ point and then freezes . . . hangs there for a minute or so and then the computer restarts on its own. Sometimes the login screen will appear and all is fine. Other times, I have to shut down and reboot.

I have run repair permissions several times and get the following info:

User differs on “private/var/db/displaypolicyd”; should be 0; user is 244.Group differs on “private/var/db/displaypolicyd”; should be 0; group is 244.Repaired “private/var/db/displaypolicyd”

I have done a google search on the subject and have only found posts about this with Lion/Mountain Lion. I have reinstalled/updated YOSEMITE but the issue remains. Even though the "displaypolicyd" (whatever that is) "has been repaired", the startup problem remains.

Any ideas what the matter could be? Is there some kind of PLIST buried that could be corrupted? Any help would be appreciated.

Check the Console logs immediately after startup and see what you find there. That may tell you where the delay is occurring.

There have been similar permissions that do not reset in virtually every release of OS X and there have been innumerable posts on these and the Apple forums. Apple's answer has always been these can be safely ignored. Generally these are the result of an ACL (access Control List) command buried somewhere in the file system. Marcel Bresnik's TinkerTool System 4 (the shareware not the freeware) is the only utility I know of that provides GUI facilities for viewing and or managing ACLs for those of us who are command line challenged.

Also, try staring in verbose mode (command-V, and I believe it must be from having been shut down, rather than a restart), and see if there's anything pertinent in its readout.

Since you can't take a screenshot during boot, see if you can get a pic of the readout, which, with some luck, will give you the opportunity.

A mac going immediately to shutdown before the login window usually indicates a failure to repair a disk problem. If booted in verbose mode, if you watch very carefully you can usually spot something sorta like

system is journaled, found 2 unprocessed transactions
running fsck on /
invalid b-tree node count
rebuilding catalog b-tree
rebuild failed
syncing disks
shutting down

basically if the shutdown was "unclean" (powered off hard, not shut down from shutdown menu) then fsck will run when restarted, to tidy up. if it finds a problem it cannot repair, MOST of the time the computer will just immediately shut down, to prevent you from working with a corrupted directory and possibly making things worse.

Note that Disk Utility is the GUI for fsck. So anything fsck can't fix, Disk Utility can't fix either.
I recommend Disk Warrior for directory problems that DU won't fix. Excellent software. I just don't get along with the publisher... (shame)

I would be willing to bet this is nearly impossible to see if you have an SSD... it's quite tricky to catch with a HDD. Alternately you can boot in single user mode and do the "fsck -fy /" command and see the result of fsck running and possibly failing.

Thanks, Everyone:

I ran the CONSOLE and two applications showed repeated messages about being unable to load, etc.: SOPHOS and WONDERSHARE.

So I trashed and securely deleted both.

Don't know why, but doing so seems to have done the trick . . . for now. (Fingers, Toes and Eyes are crossed!)

P.S. Still get the "displaypolicyd" message in the Permissions Repair Log, but I can live with that.