Access Denied
 

I'm an IT student just starting to learn Linux/Unix and working with RedHat. Today I was doing the textbook exercises for permissions when the terminal quit accepting commands. I tried to revert back to the original permissions but nothing would work. I rebooted hoping that would help, but now when I try to login to that account the login fails and I'm returned to the login banner. I have tried to access through root, but whenever I try to run any kind of command I get a message that Access is denied. Please help, I have 2 chapters I need to have finished by Monday, and if I can't get this account working again, I will have to redo all of my work since January.

Well, what did you do to cause the error? It is hard to advise on how to fix the problem, if we don't know what caused it. Did you mistype a command from the assignment?

I don't believe I mistyped anything, I was changing permissions on a file and I entered chmod 200 inform (the file name) followed by chmod 300 inform, and chmod 400 when it stopped taking commands. I don't even know of any way to get this to come up in order to find a mistake, as I am unable to get into that account.

Log in as root or boot a Live CD, look at the accounts shell history file if unsure and reverse what you fscked up.

It sounds, to me, similar to what happens when the root file system drive has an error and the is remounted as "read only." Can you examine the log files (usually in /var/log/messages) to see if there is a clue there?

I note the you are using a terminal to access a (presumably) shared system. If this is the case, can you ask he system administrator to check for system problems? (I also note that a few of the above posts assume that you are using a personal Linux/GNU system, not a shared school system. If that's the case, booting from a live image CD/DVD, mounting the problem file system, and examining the logs might be helpful.)