TROUBLE: MISTAKENLY CHANGED PERMISSION OF OS . how to recover
 

Hi have Linux Redhat 2.1 enterprise installed on BLADE server.

Today I comitted a mistake of changing permission from root user .
I issued following command

chown -R oracle:dba ..

I was in /usr02 , where my software was to be installed

instead of chown -R oracle:dba .

I changed the whole system ownership to oracle:dba
anyway how to RESTORE back the file ownerships and permission.
because it has changed permission of /etc , /dev , /var .... everything.

This server has just been finished installing OS .
if there is anyway to recover from installtion CD .
any pointers will be of immense help.

Thanks

Mallinath

If you just installed this server and haven't configured too much, your better off reinstalling.. as changing the ownership of every file is a nasty way to destroy your system. There are so many different files that are owned by root:root and root:bin and so on..

Unfortunately, TK is right. This is an excellent reason to:

1. Create an underpriviledged user account always and
2. Be bloody well sure of what you type as root before you press enter

I realize it is too late for that now. I'm sorry, you're going to have to reinstall.

Well..it's a server, so if there are not many home directories it's rather easy. You have only changes ownership. Most files are root:root. Home directories are owned by their users. The rest depends on the services yu have running.

If you have a full backup ;) you could just do a restore. tar (or dar) will just overwrite your existing files and restore the original ownership/permissions in the process.