Accidentally Changed File Ownership to Include a "Comment" [AIX]

 
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Homework and Emergencies Emergency UNIX and Linux Support Accidentally Changed File Ownership to Include a "Comment" [AIX]
# 1  
Old 10-05-2012
Accidentally Changed File Ownership to Include a "Comment" [AIX]

Hi.

I've had a little mishap.

To cut a long story short, I've accidentally recursively ran chown on a directory (actually a bunch of 'em). Not a problem in itself, but I had a slight error in the code I used to get the list of directories and ended up with a comment in the file ownership.

For example, I now have directories full of stuff like:

Code:
$ ll php
total 40
drwxr-xr-x   4 # Scott -  staff    136  3 Oct 12:37 .
drwxr-xr-x  14 root   system    476  5 Oct 16:24 ..
-rw-------   1 # Scott - staff  12288  3 Oct 12:39 .swp
-rwxr--r--   1 # Scott -  staff   4817  3 Oct 10:14 test.php

And I can't seem to find a way to change it back.

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks.

Last edited by Scott; 10-05-2012 at 11:41 AM.. Reason: update
# 2  
Old 10-05-2012
Was the # part of your command line?
Where are you the tree in on what you show us just above? ( root of any filesystem?)
# 3  
Old 10-05-2012
I thought that file ownership is just a user ID number, which you can see using ls -ln
This User Gave Thanks to Ygor For This Post:
# 4  
Old 10-05-2012
Hi scott, do you remember whaat you typed? (hehe so I can corrupt my machine also...)
I cant recreate the situation so difficult to give any suggestion for now...
# 5  
Old 10-05-2012
OK, the longer version Smilie

A while ago I was asked to remove some users from a production system. Rather than removing them I commented them out in /etc/passwd

i.e.
Code:
# Scott - removed 16.09.12 - userX:*:12345:45678.....

I also removed a symbolic link in /home to the actual home directory, and renamed the actual home directory to something else (i.e. /app/some/dir/prod/userX_DELETEME).

This was handy because a few days later I was asked to put some of the users back!

It's quite a few users so I thought I would write a script to do it recreate the link and rename the directories.

I've generated code to grab the username from the /etc/password but somehow got "# Scott" instead, and for reasons unbeknown seem to have run chown -R on the directory using "# Scott" as the owner, instead of the username.

I'm not quite sure why I ran chown but I have, and now I have a whole bunch of home directories which, when listed, show the owner as "#Scott -". ls -ln.
# 6  
Old 10-05-2012
So what you are seeing is in fact the UID translated from /etc/passwd then ?
This User Gave Thanks to vbe For This Post:
# 7  
Old 10-05-2012
Yes.

OMG. I have never seen this before.

When I added the users back, I copied them and removed the comment.

I just removed the commented line for one of them and it looks OK.

How could I never have seen this before? Smilie

ROFL. That was a waste of 20,000 bits!

Thanks Smilie
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