CHMOD Help!!

[ryneezy]

Hi,

I think I accidentally chmodded some very important files of mine to have no one have permissions to do anything. When I do an "ls -la" I don't see anything. I even tried logging into root to see if it could access those files, but it didn't work either.

I was playing around with the chmod -R switch because I was thinking it was recursive.

I think the command I might have put in to make no one have permissions to do anything is "chmod -R go-rw"

Is there any way I can set them back so that at least the root can access them?

Thanks A LOT,
Ryan

[Optimistic]

Sure. Root has access to everything, so just su to root and chmod them back to their original permissions.

chmod primer:

Read: 4
Write: 2
Execute: 1

First number is owner, second is group, last is world. So, chmod 777 is full access for everybody. 644 mean owner can read and write and everyone else can just read, etc.

If they are your files make sure that the owner reflects that, i.e., use the chown command (as root) to make sure you are the owner.

[ryneezy]

Sure. Root has access to everything, so just su to root and chmod them back to their original permissions.

When I tried that and it didn't work. I did an su to root and tried to do an "ls -la" but none of the files showd up.

I'm pretty sure I can do the chmod 421 [filename] thing, but since I did the whole directory, I do not know ANY of the filenames.

I even tried "chmod a+x *" when I was logged in as root but it says "*: no such file or directory"

Is there another way I can save these files?

Thanks,
Ryan

[adam7979]

which directory did you mess up and in which directory do you try to ls -al ? is the directory NFS'ed or smbmount'ed ? or is it just an empty directory?

as root user, you can do anything and see anything unless (the possibility that i can think of):
1) SELinux is enabled (FC3 included this as an option)
2) your ls is messed up ... (trojan?)

paste your shell session here (with pwd, ls, error message, more details)

[swemic]

An easy way to be able listing the files once again is to issue as root from the directory where you previous "messed up"

chmod -R +r *

[ryneezy]

which directory did you mess up and in which directory do you try to ls -al ? is the directory NFS'ed or smbmount'ed ? or is it just an empty directory?

I guess I should mention I'm running Mac OS X Panther. The file system is Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I was hoping Darwin ran the same way as most BSD/Linux OSes. I supposed Apple did something different with their superuser becuase I'd be able to see all those files, huh?

The directory does have files in it, I'm sure of it. I never issued a rm or mv or anything that would change their location. I was just playing around with chmod.

Here is my shell session:

Ryapple:/Users/ryans/Pictures/Lakers ryansamiley$ su root
Password:
Ryapple:/Users/ryans/Pictures/Lakers root# ls
.DS_Store
Ryapple:/Users/ryans/Pictures/Lakers root# ls -la
total 0
drwxrwxrwx   3 ryans  ryans   102  9 Mar 23:44 .
drwx------  30 ryans  ryans  1020  9 Mar 12:04 ..
-r--r--r--   1 ryans  ryans     0  9 Mar 23:44 .DS_Store
Ryapple:/Users/ryans/Pictures/Lakers root# chmod -R +r *
chmod: *: No such file or directory
Ryapple:/Users/ryans/Pictures/Lakers root#

I really appreicate your help guys,
Ryan

[Optimistic]

One possibility: in order to see files in a particular directory the directory must be searchable. So, hop up a directory and see what the permissions are of the directory.

[adam7979]

you mean there are (were) plenty of files in /usrs/ryans/pictures/lakers ? If it's true, erm.... beat me....

ls -al gives you .DS_Store, a . in front of a file means it's a hidden file (good old *nix terminology). To chmod a "hidden" file, you should use

chmod 755 .*

good luck