From owner-freebsd-questions Wed May 8 05:20:32 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id FAA12323 for questions-outgoing; Wed, 8 May 1996 05:20:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from longstreet.larc.nasa.gov (longstreet.larc.nasa.gov [128.155.25.82]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id FAA12314 for ; Wed, 8 May 1996 05:20:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from branson@localhost) by longstreet.larc.nasa.gov (8.6.11/8.6.11) id IAA24629; Wed, 8 May 1996 08:23:04 -0400 From: Branson Matheson Message-Id: <199605081223.IAA24629@longstreet.larc.nasa.gov> Subject: Re: Please Help ... I am locked out of a FreeBSD machine To: dbrockus@m1.sprynet.com (Test Account) Date: Wed, 8 May 1996 08:23:02 -0400 (EDT) Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org (FreeBSD Questions) In-Reply-To: <199605072243.PAA09812@m1.sprynet.com> from "Test Account" at May 8, 96 06:06:08 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL21] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > In /temp as root, I typed the following ... > > chown -R test .* OOps... I think you forgot that when you are saying .* you are actually saying to include things like '.' and, more in your case, '..'. Which is the directory above temp, which then included every thing in that directory.. and hance down your file system. If you want to just get dotfiles and be recursive, do somthing like this: chmod 644 -R .??* the '?'s will require two characters in the file name.. not just one which very effectively skips '.' and '..'. > > How can I fix this problem? Two suggestions... One if you have good backups ( you DO have good backups ;-), boot from a floppy, and run a restore from your tapes. Other suggestion is to boot from a floppy, copy off your /etc/ directory , and re-install your system. Finding all the files and changing them to the proper ownerships and permissions is a real PITA, I have tried this before by writing a perl script that compares to the mounted 'filesystem' cdrom and makes the changes... but this is slow and not garuenteed to fix all the problems as in configuring the system you tend to make lots of changes. In both instances you will probably need the 'fixit' floppy to have available all the various tools necessary. Good luck -branson -- ======================================================================== branson matheson | branson@widomaker.com Ferguson SysAdmin | http://widomaker.com/~branson