Root file permission accidentally changed root to 700

[jager]

HI, silly me while in the terminal and logged in as root i was changing file permissions and happened to change the root folder to 700. Now my icons have gone and i can't even access the terminal.

I was just wondering if it is possible to go to rescue mode using the cd and restore all the appropriate file permissions to root/ users if possible

Thanks in aadvance

[SlowJet]

Supposedly this will do the packages but not user files.

Reset the permissions of the all installed RPM packages

You need to use combination of rpm and a shell for loop command as follows:
for p in $(rpm -qa); do rpm --setperms $p; done
for p in $(rpm -qa); do rpm --setugids $p; done

http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/reset-...ermission.html

Otherwise it is a re-install.

SJ

[jpollard]

If all you did was change the root directory permission ("chmod 700 /" and not
a "chmod -R /"), then you should be able to login as root on a console terminal
and do a "chmod 755 /".

[marriedto51]

I would try booting the install/rescue disk first, and try setting the permissions on / back to 555.
It will take more than this if you changed permissions recursively.

And thanks, SlowJet: those are options to rpm I didn't know about. Would have been helpful to me when I messed up restoring a backup a while back...

[William Haller]

If you can't get a terminal directly, then log in on a text screen with ctrl-alt-f2 as root first. If you just hurt the single / folder itself, then this is a sample F11 root listing.

drwxr-xr-x. 27 root root 4096 2010-03-19 06:36 .
drwxr-xr-x. 27 root root 4096 2010-03-19 06:36 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2010-03-19 06:36 .autofsck
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-02-23 18:41 .automount
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2009-08-28 19:54 .autorelabel
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4096 2010-03-24 03:48 bin
drwxr-xr-x. 5 root root 1024 2010-02-20 21:36 boot
drwx------. 3 root root 4096 2009-08-25 19:08 .dbus
drwxr-xr-x 18 root root 4980 2010-03-21 03:39 dev
drwxr-xr-x. 208 root root 20480 2010-03-24 03:49 etc
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 0 2010-03-23 20:28 home
drwxr-xr-x. 14 root root 4096 2010-03-23 22:53 lib
drwxr-xr-x. 8 root root 12288 2010-03-24 03:48 lib64
drwx------. 2 root root 16384 2009-08-25 18:37 lost+found
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4096 2009-03-04 06:12 media
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 0 2010-03-19 06:38 misc
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4096 2009-03-04 06:12 mnt
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 0 2010-03-19 06:38 net
drwxr-xr-x. 4 root root 4096 2009-12-11 10:48 opt
dr-xr-xr-x 183 root root 0 2010-03-19 06:36 proc
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2010-02-27 03:18 .readahead_collect
drwxr-x---. 37 root root 4096 2010-03-23 20:48 root
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 12288 2010-03-23 22:56 sbin
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4096 2009-03-04 06:12 selinux
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4096 2009-03-04 06:12 srv
drwxr-xr-x 12 root root 0 2010-03-19 06:36 sys
drwxrwxrwt. 68 root root 12288 2010-03-24 07:26 tmp
drwxr-xr-x. 15 root root 4096 2009-10-05 19:29 usr
drwxr-xr-x. 24 root root 4096 2009-09-28 21:39 var

You might just be able to fix these top ones unless you went recursive on the chmod.