Re: [cobalt-users] CHMod Stupidity

[flash22@xxxxxxx]

On Sun, 25 Mar 2001 web_design@xxxxxxx wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> Stupid question that's a result of a stupid action....
> 
> I was installing a search engine on my intranet server 
> at work (a Qube 3) and was having some trouble.  One of 
> our systems administrators came by and said that it was 
> the result of incorrectly set permissions.  To solve 

And how many banannas a day do they feed him?

> this, he recursively chmod-ed the entire server (yes, 
> from root) to 755 as I watched in horror.
> 
> Now our server is inaccessible for just about anything; 
> I can't su over to root to change anything back because 
> of a "groups" error.  (I also am new enough to linux 

Because you lost the sticky bit on su, you are not going to be able to
become root..and all your files are non writeable except by owner now

Even if you could su to root, you are talking about hundreds of files...
everything in /dev is hosed too...

> that I'm not sure I know what to change it back to, but 
> there's no way I'm asking the sys admin to work on 
> it...).  Anyone know what to do before I start randomly 

Why not? he S*d it , make him spend 36 hours fixing it ;)
It's not like he can make it much worse...

In any case about the only hope you have is trying to force a OS install 
(If you are lucky the installer is still running as root itself)

Or console boot it single user , but you will really need to know what you
are doing to make it right...

Make sure that thing isn't connected to the net -/

gsh