UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,

Call me stupid but i accidentally executed following command :

Code:

find $INSTALLDIR/ -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;

now after which I am not able to run any command in system even ls command is giving me error for "permission denied"

Hi itajooba,

If you have a backup of the system, now is the time for a restore - failing that.

If you have a current root session that has been in existence from the point at which you ran the command, you may be able to correct this. You will need to pull a copy of the chmod binary from a backup, you could put in in tmp - probably best to use tar to preserve the permissions and then using an other system as a reference start running your new chmod command.

Regards

Gull

Assuming $INSTALLDIR is /bin and you have a open root session, run the same command with 755. After that you can tighten permissions as needed.

He can hardly run find if he can't run anything else. Whether he has a session open already doesn't matter.

Your advice is suspect in any case. There's many very important things in /bin/ which will not work with 755 permissions, such as logins.

Either restore from backup, reinstall from scratch, or craft an executable to set executable bits from raw assembly language and claw your way out from there.

And next time, grant more permissions to your user user instead of trying to chmod an entire filesystem to them.

Depends on the *NIX version. What OS are you running and what is $INSTALLDIR pointing to itajooba?

This is all very true but there might be a (slim) chance even in the case "$INSTALLDIR" was in fact /bin: it will depend on which system exactly it is and which binaries are located in /usr/bin and /usr/sbin respectively (supposing /usr/bin is NOT a link to /bin or vice versa, which is customary these days, but not with all systems). There might also be a second set of system binaries, like with SunOS' /usr/xpg4/bin with a usable chmod binary.

There is an additional chance if "$INSTALLDIR" was not "/bin" and the system is AIX: if you have TCB (trusted computing base) switched on you can restore the file permissions of system files quite easily. See the TCB documentation for details.

I hope this helps.

bakunin