[NTLUG:Discuss] permission detection tool(?)

[Johnny Cybermyth]

Let me clarify what I actually did.  It is somewhat embarrassing since I 
now know how foolish this was.  But, on the up side, I now know a lot 
more about what is going on in the /usr directory. :) The command was 
something like:

sudo chown -R :root /usr
<gasp!>

I can't possibly explain in under 10,000 words what I was doing at the 
time or which many commands I had issued before that one.  I think it 
was something stupid like I hadn't included myself in a certain group 
that I thought I already belonged to.

After a bomb like that one, I couldn't start X, GNOME still can't auto 
mount/unmount usb drives, and many other problems I discover one at a 
time like the one I'm trying to fix now.  That's why I need some kind of 
permission trace tool to tell me when who exactly is having permission 
difficulties.

Don't kick me out of the club yet!  I'll fix what I broke. :)


Greg Edwards wrote:
> Cybermyth,
> 
> First off, what permissions did you change, (owner | group | other)?
> 
> One solution would be to login as root and cd to /usr.  Run "chmod -R 
> a+rwx,u+rx,o+rx *".
> 
> This will set all of the files to rwxr-xr-x that don't already have that 
> setting.  It will not remove any permissions, just add.
> 
> There are files that you really don't want to have execute on other, but 
> this will at least make your system usable.  Getting all of the files 
> under /usr/bin and /usr/sbin right can be tedious ;(
>