05-21-2012
Years and years ago I worked for a small ISP (Internet Service Provider) that offered Unix (SunOS) shell accounts. In order to prevent the installation of rootkits and such, we would read-only mount as many partitions as possible, including /usr and /sbin. Not only were they mounted read-only, but they were mounted from a separate disk drive that was set via a jumper to be read-only! (Actually, we carefully soldered wires to the pins and ran them to a switch, so that we could install software updates w/o disassembling the box.)
A couple of times over the decade or so that I worked there we had someone who (as best as I could tell) got a root shell, tried to install some kind of rootkit/backdoor, found that the executables they wanted to over-write were in a r/o partition, edited the fstab to mount the partition read-write, and rebooted in the hopes of (I assume) logging in again with the ability to over-write stuff. The r/o drive would make the box cyclicly reboot until we found it.
In various log files I'd see the error you list in your initial post. If you aren't the admin for the machine you need to consult with that person.
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chown(8) System Manager's Manual chown(8)
Name
chown - change owner and, optionally, group
Syntax
/etc/chown [ -fR ] owner[.group] file...
Description
The command changes the owner and, optionally, group for one or more files and directories. The value for file can be a full or partial
path. The value for owner can be either a decimal UID or a login name found in the password file. The value for group can be either a
decimal GID or a group name found in the group file.
Only the superuser can change the ownership of a file. The superuser can also change the group of a file. The owner of a file can only
change the group, but the owner must be a member of any group specified.
Options
-f Inhibits display of errors that are returned when cannot change the owner or group of the specified files.
-R Causes to recursively descend any directories subordinate to file and to set the owner, group, or both for each file encountered.
When symbolic links are encountered, changes the owner and group for the link file itself but does not traverse the path associated
with the link. The option is useful only when file is a directory that is not empty.
Examples
Change the owner of to ecbell:
/etc/chown ecbell myfile
Change the owner of to craig and group of to admin:
/etc/chown craig.admin myfile
Change the owner to richart and group to eng for the directories and and for all files and directories on any levels subordinate to and
/etc/chown -R richart.eng projecta projectb
Files
See Also
chgrp(1), chown(2), group(5), group(5yp), passwd(5), passwd(5yp)
chown(8)