Introduction

Building on a discussion at www.macintouch.com, this application will check your preference files (both in your user’s preference folder and the system’s preference folder) for corruption by using the “plutil” command line tool. If it finds suspect files, it will list the files and allow you to reveal them in the Finder or move them to the trash. You may also double-click on a file in the found files table to open it in the application of your choice (you can designate the default application from the preferences). There is also an option to save the results of a scan to a text file. (Note: if you trash a file before saving a report, the report will not include information on the file you moved to the trash.)

“Preferential Treatment” is basically a GUI wrapped around the “plutil” command line tool provided by Apple Computer, Inc. since Mac OS X 10.2 (see “man plutil” in the Terminal). “plutil” just checks to see if .plist files are valid XML. This application is no panacea but it does help to fix blatantly corrupt preference files.

Authentication

There are some files that require administrative permission for this application to check them properly. If the account from which you run this application is not in the admin group, you will not be able to check these files. For this reason, for maximum benefit, it is highly recommended that you run this application from an administrative account.

If you run a check and you receive a message to the effect that you don’t have permission to read a file, you should authenticate the application with your administrative password. This will only be an option if you are using an account that is a member of the admin group. If so, to authenticate, simply click on the “lock” button at the top right corner of the main window. This will bring up an authentication dialog that will allow you to enter your password.

If you are not using an account that is a member of the admin group, currently there is no way to specify the account to use when scanning so even if you know the administrative password, the authentication will fail from this account. Therefore, when using “Preferential Treatment” from an account that is not a member of the admin group, the “lock” button will not be visible. Hopefully this will be rectified in a future release. (If your current account is not a member of the admin group but you have manually added it to the sudoers list, you can still attempt to authenticate the application from the current account by Option-clicking the “Check Preferences” button.)

Notes
	
• 	Before you move a preference file to the trash, you should quit the associated application if it is open. You should use your best judgment before deleting a preference file. In most cases, it is safe to do so and the associated application will simply regenerate a preference file based on the application defaults.

• 	Deleting the preference file (.plist) of some applications may mean you will have to re-enter a registration code and/or preferences (such as server and network settings for Mail.app) for the deleted preference file’s application to work properly.

• 	If you move one or more system preferences to the trash, it is probably a good idea to immediately restart your system.

	• 	You must have administrative permission to open many system preferences—even to use this application to scan them for corruption. For instance, the files in the folder “/Library/Preferences/DirectoryServices/” (“ContactsNodeConfig.plist”, “DirectoryService.plist”, “DSLDAPv3PlugInConfig.plist”, & “SearchNodeConfig.plist”) may be listed as corrupt when using the application.

    If you authenticate “Preferential Treatment” and then scan the preferences, this runs the “plutil” as sudo which should eliminate the permissions issue and allow the files to be parsed properly returning no error—unless, of course, there are errors with these files unrelated to permissions.

• 	If you try to open a flagged file for which you do not have read privileges, you may receive an error from the target application indicating the permissions error. This may happen even if you have authenticated “Preferential Treatment”, perhaps because you have not authenticated the target application.

• 	Some people have noticed that there are preference files in their user preferences that they do not have permission to read. Some applications write their preference files as the main administrative user for the system (“root”) so they can function at the lowest possible level to fix your system (i.e., root). This is why these applications (such as TechTool Pro or DiskWarrior) ask for your password either when they run or when they are installed and, in some cases, why they must be run from an external volume such as a CD. This is not a problem, per se, and as long as you authenticate “Preferential Treatment”, it should be able to determine if their preference files are valid XML.

Preferences

You may set the folders that the application searches. For most users, the defaults will suffice. If you are using a server or NetBoot environment, however, your preference files may be in an unique location and you can tell the application to search that location by selecting “Preferences...” from the application menu and specifying the appropriate folder(s) as necessary.

The other settings in the preferences are fairly straightforward. You may choose the default application “Preferential Treatment” uses when you double-click a flagged file and the creator code for the text file of the saved reports (“R*ch” is the code for BBEdit, a terrific text editor. It doesn’t suck.)