wrong command

[Yong Huang]

I agree with Bruce. Whether the OP's problem can be corrected by individually changing ownership really depends on the case. If there're only a few apps installed, e.g., only Apache, PHP, and Oracle (which may be typical), changing ownership back is not a big deal.

Everybody makes mistakes. I remember when I was a DBA at a small company in 1999, I accidentally updated all customers' email addresses to the same one, because I forgot the where clause in the SQL! Fortunately, I backed up the table right before the update, as my personal habit. The problem lasted for about 1 minute and was corrected. Since then, when I chat with coworkers about what's the biggest mistake you've ever had, I tell them this story.

Yong Huang

> Bruce,
> 
> At my University, a person who was getting to know Linux did this
> accidentally.  In trying to rectify the situation, he was still having
> issues accessing certain devices.  Unless you have done some script that
> parsed your permissions on a fresh install and subsequent updates or you
> run a corporate *nix (Apple), you are going to have some strange issues
> for quite awhile.  Production machines should not have to be in that
> situation, so re-installation is the best solution...nuking from orbit
> is the only way to be sure!
> 
> Good luck!
> 
> Robert
> 
> bruce wrote:
> > david...
> >
> > why did he need to reinstall the entire system again?????
> >
> > he changed the owner of everything to some "user". yep, this will be an
> > issue to some/alot of things... but depending on the circumstances, he could
> > over time figure out which apps/files should be "root" and then figure out
> > the rest later on!!
> >
> > on the other hand, reinstalling might be easier, if he left the
> > drive/format/partitions the same.. but it still wouldn't do anything for his
> > own apps/files that aren't system provided.. this definitely points to a
> > good backup/restore process though...
> >
> > god knows i walkt the tightrope line enough, with no backup/restore!!
> >
> > peace