Re: [cobalt-users] CHMod Stupidity

[Greg Hewitt-Long <greg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>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 -/


As mentioned, you'll need to boot from something other than your screwed hard-disk - somethink like the OS install CD or another removable disk (?!?) - boot it into single user mode will give you root on the machine, then you need to mount the screwed disk, and start putting the permissions back.

You can (if he didn't alter the ownership) write a script that will traverse the disk, check if the file is on the bootbable device you started from, then chmod the permissions of the messed up file, to that of the file on the boot disk - that will at least help, but you're still left with a TON of stuff to do by hand (anything not on your startup disk for a start).

I don't envy you your task - I would probably look for the last backup I had.  I'd pray it was tar, then tvf it into a file, and use a script to read the file contents, line by line, and chmod and chown to whatever the file is in the backup.

All in all - I suggest that you hand the task back to the idiot who stuffed it up on the first place -

Can you tell us his name?  I don't want to inadvertently employ him!?!  ;{)

Greg Hewitt-Long

>
>gsh
>
>
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