I have many files that I cannot access due to fouled up permissions. Here is a sample of part of /usr/lib/kde3/; anyone have a clue about the cause? :


-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8124 2006-11-02 15:23 kabc_dir.so
?--------- ? ? ? ? ? kabc_file.la
?---rwSr-x 42990 3533744110 2817143842 2817115392 1923-03-03 21:55 kabc_file.so
?--------- ? ? ? ? ? kabcformat_binary.la
?--------- ? ? ? ? ? kabcformat_binary.so
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1418 2006-11-02 15:09 kabc_ldapkio.la

This is an etch install, several months old, and has been repeated dist-upgraded.

Suggestion: put your files in a save place and re-install with a new Etch net-install CD. I'm not aware of any tool/utility to repair this kind of error, perhaps an file-system check could help (but not sure it can)

the only time I've seen similar(on my own system), thankfully it was only for my regular user. when logged in as root, the problem was gone. I copied the affected files to another partition (as root) and formatted the affected partition. I still don't know what happened or why. All I know for certain is the problem only affected my regular user. here's hoping you are so lucky kmoffat.

Well! I thought before I reinstalled I'd try a forced fsck, so ran:
e2fsck -f /dev/hdb1
which gave a too many errors error and made me run it manually, which I did, and after pressing return a billion times to fix problems, I seem to have fixed this mess. This is, of course, very tentative, but very hopeful!

Thanks for the answers, and wish me luck!