Ubuntu – How to recover from chmod -R a-wrx / command?

chmod

Today I ran sudo chmod -R a-wrx /. Now nothing is working. Can anyone help me recover my system?

Best Answer

Basic answer

If you are comfortable with scripting you could:

  1. do a clean install on another machine.
  2. use a script to extract the entire file directory and annotate it automatically with all its permissions (for instance, /usr/bin/sh 0755 [I am just making something up here])
  3. use that list to apply the same permissions on your messed up installation.

Or of course a clean install is possible.

BTW: Who told you to issue that command?

More Information (edit)

I actually just found a really nice script that uses the same logic. As the author says, be careful before using it and don't if you are not sure you know what it does: https://superuser.com/questions/132891/how-to-reset-folder-permissions-to-their-default-in-ubuntu-9-10

To help you on the way (from the source mentioned above):

find /etc /usr /bin -exec stat --format "chmod %a ${MPOINT}%n" {} \; > /tmp/restoreperms.sh
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