What is the best way to fix Ubuntu's Root file system permissions?
I was changing file permissions on a whole bunch of files that needed to be removed, I had accidentally changed the permissions for /
, /etc
, /var
, /home
, /bin
, /media
and all the files underneath. majority of them were changed to 0777
. All this because I added a space to chmod
command that I was running.
Now I am running into issues with stuff not working correctly and unable to log into root with either su
or sudo
. So administration from the desktop is not possible, and trying to get into grubs OS selection is also impossible, because last upgrade for some reason turned it off the menu when it boots. Any kind of admin action is nearly impossible to do because of this.
Is there a script I can run in the root shell that will fix it or should I just re-install Ubuntu? Are there any other things that I can do to fix this other then changing each directory and file to the correct permissions?
I am currently running Ubuntu 10.10 64bit