First things, I'm running Debian woody with kernel 2.6.x. And I'm an id10t.

I had gotten a permissions error while working with postgres saying they weren't set to 0700. No problem I thought, I had a few terminal windows open trying to get the database up and running.

I was using one terminal as root at the / dir so I could 'find' files I needed. Without thinking I typed chmod 700 -R * and hit enter. Needless to say after my next reboot my regular user could not get anything to work.

Is there a way to restore all system permissions? I'm on dialup at home, so reinstalling is my absolute last resort.

not that i am aware of...

oops! lol

looks like you've knackered it i'm afriad.

maybe it's time to start that slackware install? what the problem there?

if you have the debian cd(s) you could reinstall but keep your /home stuff by moving it to another parition....

That's what I figured. Ahh well, I've since installed Slackware 10.2 on my other drive and move the contents of my /home so all is well. Sort of. My modem crapped out so now I have no connection for updates & installs. I'll sort that out soon.


Thanks.

I've done something very similar. AFAIK, there is no way to fix this. I've had to reinstall 3 or 4 times, but it was because I made stupid mistakes, not something the install did. It's all part of the learning experiance