Help did something very stupid

[DAGA]

Hi,

I was trying to change file ownership of some files, and accidentally wrote sudo chown joe:joegroup /*/* where joe and joegroup are my username and group. Now I can't do anything that requires sudo like changing the ownership back or running adept.

When I try to use sudo on the command line i get sudo: /etc/sudoers is mode 0644, should be 0440
joe@joe-desktop:/bin$ sendmail: fatal: open /etc/postfix/main.cf: No such file or directory

When I try to run adept it displays an error tha says "Su returned with an error".

I don't know what to do, any help will be appreciated.

[jankushka]

Re: Help did something very stupid

boot in "recovery" mode (when you start your box, type "esc" to get to the boot menu).
that should get you a root shell.
cd into the directory you were when you issued the chown command.
change the relevant ownership(s) back.
then issue:

init 2

all should be back alright.
hth

[SheeEttin]

Re: Help did something very stupid

Ouch.
It doesn't matter where he was: he did "chown foo:bar /*/*"--meaning it chowned /*. That's... everything. Every last file.

I guess you could "chown root:root /*", "chmod g+rw /*", and "chown you:you /home/[user]". That'll get everything pretty close to normal, except for things like sendmail, which have things owned root:mail so that they can write to them.

The only way to completely fix everything would be to do a complete reinstall. You've almost hosed your box. Not quite, but pretty close.

[jankushka]

Re: Help did something very stupid

It doesn't matter where he was: he did "chown foo:bar /*/*

true

"--meaning it chowned /*. That's... everything. Every last file.

a lot.
not everything.
chown -r would be everything.

[SheeEttin]

Re: Help did something very stupid

There is no -r. If you thought -r was recursive; no, -R (which he did) is recursive.

[DAGA]

Re: Help did something very stupid

Ouch.
It doesn't matter where he was: he did "chown foo:bar /*/*"--meaning it chowned /*. That's... everything. Every last file.

I guess you could "chown root:root /*", "chmod g+rw /*", and "chown you:you /home/[user]". That'll get everything pretty close to normal, except for things like sendmail, which have things owned root:mail so that they can write to them.

The only way to completely fix everything would be to do a complete reinstall. You've almost hosed your box. Not quite, but pretty close.

that's what i tought but chown root:root /* does not work, because something happened to su and sudo. Getting ready for a complete reinstall.
That should teach me not to mess with chown at 2:00 in the morning

[jankushka]

Re: Help did something very stupid

I was trying to change file ownership of some files, and accidentally wrote sudo chown joe:joegroup

or didn't s/he?

[mchuskie]

Re: Help did something very stupid

Can I pose a not-altogether-tangential question about your motivation for doing what you did? In other words, why did you do it - and which files were you intending to change?

[DAGA]

Re: Help did something very stupid

Can I pose a not-altogether-tangential question about your motivation for doing what you did? In other words, why did you do it - and which files were you intending to change?

A friend brought his hard drive with some files I needed, I copied them to my home folder but after that all the files belonged to root and couldn't work with them. I thought that if I used and asterisk it would change all the files ownership quickly but accidentally put the slash before the asterisk and my troubles began.

[SheeEttin]

Re: Help did something very stupid

Yeah. Need to be pretty careful with sudo, the ch* commands, and globbing.
Nasty things like that happen.