UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,
While changing ownerships from the root on a server i'm managing, i typed chown -R username:users * and it changed all ownership to username. Can someone tell me if there is someway I can set things back the way they were before? I can't even su username from the root. Am I going to just have to go under username and change all the ownership back to root and then manually change the ones i want under username? How would I do that?

Thank you
scott

Sorry to have to tell you this but there is no easy way
of backing out this sort of change.

Can you explain to me why i can't even su to my user name from root? Or if i wanted to change ownership to root how would i do that?

thanks

It would help to know what directory you were in at the time you entered that command...

As you have found out using any recursive function is very dangerous especially with the * option. They can be a deadly combination.

Lucky for you, changing ownership is not as deadly as changing all the exe permissions to 444. which can be deadly.



Basically, You need to check the ownership in /sbin, /usr/bin and /usr/sbin. And maybe /etc as well. This will get you back on your feet. I would hope You have a backup of some kind if you need it to restore from.


On my box /usr files are all owned by root:sys
Under /usr/sbin most all of them are owned by bin:bin
Under /usr/bin most all are owned by bin:bin


The su command is under /usr/bin/su.

su generally will have the setuid bit set. Thus:

-r-sr-xr-x 1 root sys 17568 Nov 5 2001 /usr/bin/su

# chown root:sys /usr/bin/su
# chmod 4755 /usr/bin/su

Cheers,

Keith