Mac Boot Never Reaches Spinning Gear

[llitz123]

This is more of an "is anyone else having this issue" post.
I have a solution, yet I'm unsure why it's happening or if the fix is legit and would like some input.
Basically over time a few of our Macs - either MacBook Pro's or Minis running 10.9.5 or 10.10.5 - stop booting. The symptom is the boot screen gets past POST yet never makes it to the spinning gear.
I troubleshot this to a permissions issue and the solution of chmod'ing the volume to 755 works. Once I apply the fix, I can immediately boot the machines into login screen and there seem to be no issues after.
Has anyone else experienced this? Or thoughts?
Thanks for any assistance.

[thoule]

755 on the root volume? Seriously? I don't like that idea at all!

Try booting one of these machines and hold Command key and 'V' key at the same time. It should boot in Verbose mode so you can see what it's doing. If you get a real error message, report back and we'll see if we can help.

[llitz123]

Yeah we did a verbose yet nothing jumped out. I'll record it the next time it happens.

[Fveja]

@llitz123, can you post the output of the following command, from a system that is having the issue:

ls -lad /

[llitz123]

@Fveja, I don't have a machine that is currently having the issue, yet the next time it occurs I will run the command and post.
Thanks.

[ivanlovisi]

do you had try to boot with a external HardDrive?

[llitz123]

I did a fair amount of troubleshooting.
Checked the SMART status, booted from external, from recovery, etc. I ran TTP, DFA, Drive Genius, and repaired the directory using Disk Warrior. Nothing fixed the issue. I tried multiple solutions I found browsing Apple forums and that led me to the solution in the OP. I should have recorded the permissions prior to changing them and I will do so the next time it happens and report back here.
I guess no one else has experienced this issue so far...

[ivanlovisi]

we have had the same problems. with 10.10.5
Unfortunately, we must Macs new enroll

[llitz123]

@ivanbs ah. We can do a re-image/data migration, yet I'd be interested in preventing this from happening if possible as limiting user downtime is paramount.

[llitz123]

@Fveja We have the issue or a similar one again.
The result of ls -lad /:

drw-rw-rw- 33 root wheel 1190 Mar 22 14:56 Macintosh HD/