[ubuntu-za] NETBOOK CRASH

[Lee Sharp]

On 09/26/2010 04:04 PM, Jonathan Groll wrote:

>    From reading the results of the ls -al /var and for the
> subdirectories, the owner of the files in /var seems to have been
> changed recursively to be 'vincent'. In order to fix, unfortunately,
> it is not as simple as recursively changing the owner of the files
> back to being root as many of the subdirectories/files should be owned
> by users other than root (for example /var/cache/man should be owned
> man:root, /var/run/dbus should be owned messagebus:messagebus;
> /var/log/auth.log should be owned syslog:adm; the list goes on and
> on).

Ouch!  That would do bad things...

> So, possibly all the system files under /usr or even from the root
> folder of / may also be owned incorrectly. I would recommend
> reinstalling, as the clear solution would be to reinstall every
> package on the system. A reinstall would be the quickest way to get
> back to a clean system. Unless anyone else has a better idea, like
> perhaps upgrading directly to 10.10??

That will only change the files that are "new" in 10.10, and an upgrade 
may keep the same permissions.  I would reinstall.  Get a package list 
first...

			Lee