Chmod -R 777 /. – RHEL 5.5

chmodfile-permissionsrhel5server-crashes

A shell script testing went bad and it issued

chmod -R 777 /.

to the system, instead of

chmod -R 777 ./

and as expected it wiped the critical meta data. We have turned off the system and it will not function properly the next time it is turned on.

I am told that

rpm --setperms -a 

rpm --setugids -a

should atleast fix the permission of the packages maintained by rpm. Is it worth doing?

And is there any script available which will copy the permission from an identical system? To atleast get the box working. The Box is running RHEL5.5

Thanks!

Best Answer

If your duplicate system is truly duplicate then you may have a chance with running

getfacl -R . >perms.bak

on the good system in / and then on the bad one

setfacl --restore=perms.bak

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Chmod -R 777 / on ubuntu – numerous problems

I would actually consider doing a full reinstall of the system. Even if you manage to get most permissions right and that things seem to work there will most likely be some special permissions laying around, just waiting to cause trouble.

Alternatively I'd compare the permission with a second, possibly freshly installed, machine. Shouldn't be to hard together with your favorite scripting language.

Ubuntu – Undoing chmod 777

There's an easy way to back up and restore permissions amd ownerships of a directory tree using the ACL tools. It works even if you don't have ACLs enabled on the filesystem.

getfacl -R >saved-permissions
setfacl --restore=saved-permissions

Most permission issues will cause a “permission denied” error message to appear somewhere, either on the console or in some log file.

A powerful tool to investigate file access issues is strace. It shows the system calls made by a process. The output can be difficult to understand, but it's relatively easy to see what files the program is trying to access and why it can or cannot find what it wants. Usage examples:

strace -s9999 -o myprogram.strace myprogram  # trace myprogram
strace -s9999 -fF ...                        # also trace subprocesses
strace -s9999 -p12345                        # connect to running process by PID
strace -s9999 -efile ...                     # only show filesystem calls
strace -eaccess,open,stat,lstat              # only show common file access calls

Best Answer

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Chmod -R 777 / on ubuntu – numerous problems

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