[ILUG] repair permissions

[Niall Walsh]

Gar wrote:

>i  typed the command chmod 777 -R /    and pressed enter instead of tab.
>is there any way (apps or commands) to change the permissions back to
>what they were?
>
>  
>
I suspect the answer is no and will worship any ILUG guru who knows 
otherwise :-)

Did you hit Ctrl+C or do something else to kill the chmod and if so were 
you quick?   Perhaps it didn't do very much so it'll be more easily 
fixed?   If you can tell us what distro and how far it got, perhaps 
someone can offer some advice on the possible.

As I see it your options are:

Re-install
Restore from backup
Gather and restore permissions from backup and hand-fix extra files
Restore all permissions "manually" (package tools might help)
Perhaps the installer or package tools for your distro can do something 
sensible

Makes me wonder why --no-preserve-root is the default for chmod rather 
then --preserve-root, or why it isn't aliased for root on 
(all/more/some) distros.

Good Luck!

Niall