I somehow managed to wipe the whole of the /var directory tree. Is there a quick way I can restore this and the permissions? If not, can someone tell me what directories to create and their permissions. I'm using Slackware 10, so I've lost all the packages info aswell, is there any way of getting these back?

Sorry, I don't know another way, but did you make a backup?

Nope, . I could maybe get the packages data back by just re-installing them from the CD (I have every package installed so it wouldn't be hard), and I have kept all the packages I have created. Is there any other important data I will need to get back? I know a lot of it is just log files.

Well you could restore all the default directories and such with permissions but some vital files would be missing, especially the packages info stored in the directory. If you use pkgtools like removepkg, installpkg, etc, all those are wiped so you couldn't use those tools to perform upgrades, installs of tgz packages, etc.

But one system is different from another. You could have had directories others don't have and vice versa. I'd suggest if you don't have too much on this machine, back up all your other configs/files and just do a reinstall of your system if you don't have a backup copy of your /var directory.

Yeah, I know about the packages info, but I could probably get this back as I said in my last post. I don't seem to have any other problems, just a few error messages about missing directories. But I could hopefully fix these by restoring the directories and permissions. Is there anything else critically important that is put in /var in Slackware?

Does anyone have any ideas? Or am I just going to have to reinstall?

Unlike Windows, there is no practical way to recover deleted files in Linux. Unless you've got a backup copy of /var, I would say your best bet is just to reinstall. Good luck with it. -- J.W.