system down by chown

demmylls · 11-22-2003, 03:33 PM

i screwedup my system
i have RH9
and in root user
and set this
# chown -Rv root:root /usr
(just trying using chown)

then i set

# chown -Rv laiseng /usr

after that i

i switch user to laiseng

then

# su
password:

the root password is working

then

copy everything from /root/.kde to /home/laiseng

then i start to notice that my superuser password dont work anymore
everytime i

# su
password:blabalbla (which is my correct password)
su: invalid password

suddenly the password wont work.

i think i have screwedup my ownership of folder and its subfolders

how to set back all files and folders ownership to root again in the current conditions of mine

go to RH9 cd rescue wont let me chown coz file system mounted in readonly and
now the root password wont work.

but when i in RH rescue disk i type in

# login
# user:root
# password:balbalbal

and it work but as soon as i wanted to remount my file system it said cant do that and need a superuser to do that
huh? i am not logged into root account and it still need a root use to do remounting

what else can i try?

how to recover my system since the /usr/X11RC6 is not owned by root and bcoz of this i cant even startx
xserver cant start

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeeeelllllllllllppppppppppppp.............

please dont tell me to reinstall my linux!

/bin/bash · 11-22-2003, 05:26 PM

You can probably fix the chmod. Al you need to do is figure which rpm packages are affected. Once you know the package you can find the original state by doing this:

Code:

# rpm -q --dump setup-2.4-2mdk|awk '{print $1,$6,$7}'
/etc/bashrc root root
/etc/csh.cshrc root root
/etc/csh.login root root
/etc/exports root root
/etc/filesystems root root
/etc/group root root
/etc/host.conf root root
/etc/hosts.allow root root
/etc/hosts.deny root root
...

I cut the listing short but you should get the Idea. If I totally screwed up my /etc directory I could use the output of that command to un-chmod everything. All I have to do is change the awk statement a little awk '{print $6":"$7,$1} and put the whole thing in a chmod.

Code:

# rpm -q --dump setup-2.4-2mdk|awk '{print $6":"$7,$1}'
root:root /etc/bashrc
root:root /etc/csh.cshrc
root:root /etc/csh.login
root:root /etc/exports
root:root /etc/filesystems
root:root /etc/group
root:root /etc/host.conf
root:root /etc/hosts.allow
root:root /etc/hosts.deny

Of course you need to find out which rpm packages are affected, which you can do by using rpm -Va. That will check all packages and report any modifications. But you are only concerned about user/group ownership so you could do something like this:
rpm -Va|grep [UG].
This will probably take a very long time. Once you find the modified files you just need to identify the package the file belongs to then you can re-chmod the files back to where they need to be.

There is probably an easier way but if so I don't know what it would be.

/bin/bash · 11-22-2003, 07:09 PM

I'll post this just in case you need it.

Lets say you wanted to return the ownership of all the files from rpm package foobar.i386.rpm.

rpm -q --dump foobar.i386.rpm|gawk '{ command = "chown "$6":"$7" "$1;system (command)}'

<edit> If you want to find all the packages that have files with modified User/Group, do this:
rpm -Va|grep [UG]|rpm -qf `awk '{print $3}'`|sort -u

Note: The above could take a really long time to complete.