this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Not me, but one I saw... dude used chmod to lock down permissions across the board... including root... including the chmod command.
"What do I do?"
🤔
"Re-install?"
You could boot on an USB, mount the filesystem and change the permissions. But if the dude changed a whole lot of permissions, reinstalling might be the smart thing to do...
Changed it all to 000. ಠ_ಠ
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5593752/who-can-access-a-file-with-octal-permissions-000-on-linux-unix
Yeah, a very unfortunate one: probably, the most painful to recover from. I'd just reinstall, honesty 😅 At least with mine I could simply add the necessary stuff from chroot or pacstrap and not spend a metric ton of time tracking all the files with incorrect permissions
There's got to be other tools though that could change the file permissions on chmod, right? Though I suppose you'd need permission to use them and/or download them.
You can dump the permissions from the working system and restore them. Quite useful when working with archives that don't support those attributes or when you run random stuff from the web 😁
Many distros offer a automated file/directory ownership restore feature on their liveOS
I managed to do that back when I was new. Luckily it was a fresh install, so I didn't lose much when I had to reinstall.
So far, that has been the only time I really screwed something up outside of a virtual machine.
oh... uh...
@jordanlund @fl42v I *think* this one could be recoverable if they had a terminal still active by using the dynamic loader to call chmod — or by booting from a liveCD and chmodding from there.
That'd likely get you to a 'working' state quickly, but it'd take forever to get back to a 'sane' state with correct permissions on everything.
Exactly. There's no way to even know what the previous permissions were for everything.
They were TRYING to recursively change permissions in a single directory, accidentally hit the whole system. :(