System permissions problem?

Sup everyone

Ive run into a strange issue on a machine running 12.04 LTS.

I think it started after running chown to modify permissions on what I thought was one directory, a subdir of Downloads folder.

Now, when the machine boots, the GUI session fails to load. I can log in to virtual terminals (TTYS) with my user account and thats about it.

The machine runs some services which dont start up when it boots. Both network interfaces in the machine do not get configured by DHCP on boot up so it cant communicate on network at all. Machine says it cant even open a ICMP socket to localhost when try to ping loopback. 'Operation not permitted' is what is says....sounds like permission problem.

When you try to do anything root, 'it says must be setuid root'.

The other strange thing is I can hear the CPU fan working indicating something processor intensive is going on.

Boot into a recovery CD? Any thoughts?

I don't really see how changing permissions on a sub-directory of your Downloads directory would cause the problems you have posted. It will be difficult for anyone to suggest a way for you to undo whateveer it is you did when you don't know what it is that you did. If the GUI fails to load, have you tried typing: startx at a terminal prompt?

strange, after a window comes up with 'failed to load session: ubuntu' I click enter and then a window comes up that says 'The system is running in low graphics mode'...click enter again, a window comes up 'What would you like to do' ....run in low graphics mode one session, reconfigure graphics, troubleshoot, exit to console...at this point there is no response to my keyboard or mouse so I cannot choose an option

as you can see in my original reply, this is more than a graphics issue

let me know if you have any other suggestions, its lookin like i might need to reinstall OS...

wait dont do that, Is your card AMD? I had this same issue last week when I went from 12.04 to 12.10. 12.10 does not support some older AMD cards by default. let me find the link I used and it worked great.

Try this.

Code:

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sudo add-apt-repository ppa:makson96/fglrx
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install fglrx-legacy

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nah I'm using onboard video intelchip

thanks but if you read my original respose, my network interfaces do not get configd by dhcp so I have no network...also I cannot sudo anything