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I accidently changed the permissions of linux /

sudo chown -R deploy:deploy /

and messed up every thing. SSH is not working, web server showing error. And it is a cloud server! (Ubuntu 10.04)

There are a lot of similar questions on chmod command on / But none on chown

How to restore this ?

I appreciate the help!

2 Answers 2

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Back up any files you particularly care about. Recover the system from your latest backup. Restore the files you backed up to bring the system back to current.

This is why you make backups. You could spend hours and hours trying to get every file's permission right and have some subtle problems days or weeks down the road. It's not worth it.

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    On the plus side, you just made it really simple to back up the (broken) system with rsync -a [email protected]:/ backupdir/.
    – Eroen
    Mar 20, 2012 at 5:36
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Agree with David, you will have to start all over. At this point your probably best off recovering as much as you can from that machine and the re-installing everything.

If you are having trouble getting anything to work you can always try to change the owner to root and then recover and see if you can recover your files that way.

Good luck!

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