From owner-freebsd-questions  Thu Jun  8 11:49:33 2000
Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Received: from theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in (theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in [144.16.71.20])
	by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id AD6B837C116
	for <questions@FreeBSD.ORG>; Thu,  8 Jun 2000 11:49:26 -0700 (PDT)
	(envelope-from rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in)
Received: (qmail 67332 invoked from network); 8 Jun 2000 18:49:10 -0000
Received: from unknown (HELO theory3.physics.iisc.ernet.in) (qmailr@144.16.71.158)
  by theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in with SMTP; 8 Jun 2000 18:49:10 -0000
Received: (qmail 5704 invoked by uid 211); 8 Jun 2000 18:49:10 -0000
Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2000 00:19:09 +0530
From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in>
To: Meagan Jia Pi <meagan@e-lingo.com>
Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: question about chown
Message-ID: <20000609001909.A5699@physics.iisc.ernet.in>
References: <862568F8.0062581F.00@MCSMTP.MC.VANDERBILT.EDU> <058f01bfd178$5c380880$e293c83f@meagan>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
User-Agent: Mutt/1.2i
In-Reply-To: <058f01bfd178$5c380880$e293c83f@meagan>; from meagan@e-lingo.com on Thu, Jun 08, 2000 at 11:35:45AM -0700
X-Operating-System: Linux 2.0.36 i686
X-Question: Do you enjoy reading pointless headers?
Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Precedence: bulk
X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG

Meagan Jia Pi said on Jun  8, 2000 at 11:35:45:
> Greetings!
> 
> A friend of mine logged in as root and did this under some user's home
> directory:
> 
>     chown username .*
> 
> trying to change ownership of all the hidden files, but a disaster happened:
> he unintentionally
> changed ownership for all the users' home directory to this paticular user.
> 
> I understand the best way to do this is to go a directory above, and do
> "chown -R username",
> but I 'd like to find out why it happened that way.

Because the shorthand for the directory immediately below the
current directory is .. which got included in .*
So if he was in /home/me, .. meant /home, and everything in /home got
chown'ed.

R.


To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message