messed var directory

[Sven Richter]

On Friday 15 June 2007 00:47:48 Derek Broughton wrote:
> Scott Lockwood wrote:
> > On Thu, 2007-06-14 at 17:01 -0400, Brian McKee wrote:
> >> On 14/06/07, Sven Richter  wrote:
> >> > Hi Folks,
> >> >
> >> > recently i did something very stupid,
> >> > instad of chmodding /var/www/*
> >> > i chmodded /var/* with 0700 recurseviley.
> >> > No i got several problems, i cant search apt database
> >> > as user and so on.
> >> >
> >> > Is there any way i could recover the old permissions?
> >> > Something like an overview about the standard setup?
> >>
> >> Good one :-)
> >>
> >> FWIW chmod 755 everything would be closer than 0700
> >> then /var/lock tmp and crash are 1777 /var/local and mail are 2775
> >>
Ok, i did that :-)

> >> but that's just a dirty surface fix.   Maybe there's some way to coax
> >> the default permissions info out of dpkg?      I'd love to hear
> >> suggestions on this one - I can see me doing it :-)
> >
Didnt find anything for it.

> > Ugh. Be there, done that - did a full reinstall. Can't trust anything
> > else...
>
Hm, that would waste too much time right now.
My examens are ante portas :-)


> afaict, the biggest problem is /var/lib.  That's a hodgepodge of different
> permissions.
Yep, i needed my postgresql database today, starting it stopped
with the following error message:
 * Starting PostgreSQL 8.2 database server                                                                
* could not change directory to "/var/lib/postgresql"
pg_controldata: could not open 
file "/var/lib/postgresql/8.2/main/global/pg_control" for reading: Permission 
denied
Error: Could not parse locale out of pg_controldata output
                                                                                                  
[fail]


Any ideas what i could do about it?


Greetings 
Sven Richter