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Date:      Wed, 8 May 1996 18:06:08 +0000
From:      "Test Account" <dbrockus@m1.sprynet.com>
To:        questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Please Help ... I am locked out of a FreeBSD machine
Message-ID:  <199605072243.PAA09812@m1.sprynet.com>

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I am currenly running FreeBSD 2.0.5R.   

No users can log in to the machine.

Here is what happened.

I was trying to fix a problem with some file rights.   Someone  
changed the ownership of all of the files and directories under /home

I cd'ed to a directory "/temp".  I was going to try to use chown in 
each users directory and assign the correct owners.
(in /temp there are a couple of directories beneath it.)

In /temp as root,  I typed the following ...

chown -R test .*

I was trying to change the ownership of all of the .* in /temp and 
the directories below it to a user named test.

It was taking to long so I suppend the process.   Most of the dirs 
and files off the root directory are now owned by the user test.
 
Some how chown went down the dir tree and back up it.  There are no 
links in /temp.

Did the ".*" cause chown to change the ownership to the ".."directory, 
causing the change off the root dir?  

After the change in the ownership of those files.  No one can log in. 
 I am logged in right now as a normal user.  I can not change any of 
the ownerships.  After the chown command I exited "su", which was a 
very stupid mistake.  

So now, no one can log in and I have no idea what to do.

How can I fix this problem?

Someone please respond to this.


David Brockus

Please send replies directly to me.  I can not receive the freebsd 
questions list right now.  Thanks. 
 



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