up vote 3 down vote favorite
1

I've just spent most of the day setting up an Ubuntu 12.10 server and I was really enjoying it. I was stupid enough to do:

sudo chmod 666 /*

instead of the equally suspect

sudo chmod 666 ./*

I can't use any programs on the system now

I havent yet set a root password so now I really wished I was on CentOS :'(

Is there anything I can do without starting again? Thanks in advance!

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1  
Just for future reference, you never need to use ./*, the simple * will suffice and is less prone to misstypings. – terdon Mar 9 '13 at 13:37
    
Having a root user wouldn't have helped in your situation. – Sepero Mar 1 '15 at 8:21
up vote 7 down vote accepted

You have to boot from a live cd, because all your executables are not reachable in the moment (dropped access bit on directories /bin, ...).

Please do:

  1. boot from a live cd
  2. mount your system below mnt, don't forget to add additional mounts like /usr, /var, ...
  3. cd /mnt/
  4. for d in * ; do if [ -d ${d} ] ; chmod u+rwx,og+rx-w ${d}; fi
  5. chmod og= root lost+found # more restrictive permissions
  6. reboot your system and drink a beer :-)

caveat: This applies to the root directory / which normally consists only of subdirectories and symbolic links.

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Thanks so much, I'm trying it now. I suppose that's such a logical solution I didn't really think of it! – Cobolt Mar 9 '13 at 13:56
2  
@Cobolt - your welcome :-) Be happy and think what would have been happened if you also had added the -R switch to chmod ;-) – user86064 Mar 9 '13 at 13:58
    
Worked like a charm! Thanks. I think it's time I learnt bash scripting, php/perl doesn't make me thing sys admin enough. Thanks again! – Cobolt Mar 13 '13 at 8:02

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