We have Fedora Core 4 on an Intel box and have had some issues with some of our staff not having rights to all the files.

Today, one of our techs tried to solve this by running the following 2 commands at the root:

find . -type f -exec chmod 666 {} \;
find . -type d -exec chmod 777 {} \;

Linux nolonger boots.

We can load the recovery CD to access a command line, and the files appear to be intact, but the GUI and services like FTP won't load.

My question: What can we do to restore this without doing a reinstall and reloading our not so complete data backup?

Thanks in advance!
Brad

Well, this one's pretty simple - you have *no* executable files in your filesystem! From init on up through the boot process, everything is going to fail because they can't execute. Boot up a recovery CD (or really just about any *nix CD) and chmod -R 777 /* and try rebooting into the install - it should get you a working server.

That was the easy part.

The hard part is that now you have a box that is way less secure than even Windows 9x was and you intend to use it as a server. Now, you could always go through the filesystem file by file, directory by directory and set all of the permissions back where they should be or you could always take the easy way out - do a full backup and reinstall the OS. Depending on your distro/package management you might be able to rig up a script that basically reinstalls all of your current packages (which would restore permissions as a side effect) but you will still have to browse the filesystem manually to ensure system security.

Finally, flog the guy who tried massive systemwide alterations on a production server...BAD ADMIN!

Flogging is too good for the guy. He should be expelled (ie. fired) and made to use Windoze for the rest of his life. I would have said eternity, but I'd never wish that on anyone. Imagine spending eternity with a bunch of born again Christians!

Cheers.