restoring default ownerships/permissions: was networking prob

[James Takac]

On Saturday 15 September 2007 22:46:49 Mario Vukelic wrote:
> On Sat, 2007-09-15 at 22:18 +1000, James Takac wrote:
> > sudo chown -R USERNAME:USERNAME /
> >
> > however I thought maybe trying to return the root partion to root
> > ownship and perissions,  i.e. the above but root in place of username
> > which appears to have meseed it up a lil further
>
> No, this will not return really the system to a usable state. Many
> directories and files are not owned by root, for example
> in /dev, /etc, /var, and elsewhere. Using a bit of command line magic,
> you may be able to create a list of permissions on one of the working
> machines, and apply it automatically to the broken one. Or do it
> manually ...
>
> Possibly reinstalling all packages helps, but that's just a wild guess.

Hi Mario

Thx for the reply. Well, so far I have the system back where it was before my 
first email, i.e. for now the only thing not actually working is the 
networking (afaik) which I believe is still an ownership/permission problem. 
And for the record, it's a single user system as are the others.

I'm not afraid of the amount of work it might be to return the system back to 
where it should be. In fact I see it as a good learning experience. And yes, 
I did apply the dang thing to the root directory but have for the most pat 
(as far as I can tell) recovered from it. You only put your hand on a hot 
stove plate once unless you're a slow learner ;)

Any advice on where or how one might start?

James