Re: screwed up permissions for whole filesystem

[Shawn Lamson <shawn.lamson@verizon.net>]

On Fri, June 27 at 12:08 PM EDT
Shri Shrikumar <shri@urbyte.com> wrote:

> Hi All,
> 
> I did something very stupid - 
> 
> cd /root
> chmod go-r .* -R
> 
> thinking that it would change just the permissions on the files inside
> the root folder. Now all my permissions are screwed up.
> 
> Is there an easy way to rebuild the permissions on the files in the
> system.

Are you sure you messed up the whole filesystem that way?  /root is
roots homedir and according to chmod manpage:
"
In contrast, chmod ignores symbolic links encoun-
       tered during recursive directory traversals.
"
I do not know of an easy way to fix it if you did, though.  I guess most
system files have a mode of 755.  I made a similar mistake in /usr once.
 I had to tweak the X init file perms but mostly made things 755 and it
has seemed okay since.

> 
> Thanks,
> 
> 
> Shri
> 


Shawn Lamson
shawn.lamson@verizon.net
Debian GNU/Linux 3.0