Cannot find a safe socket path in '/tmp'

Question

A while ago I accidentally ran chmod 777 /, and stopped it as soon as I realized what I had done. Unfortunately, it must have gotten to my /tmp directory, because whenever I start to run Firefox now, this is the error I get:

** ERROR **: Cannot find a safe socket path in '/tmp'
Trace/breakpoint trap

I can't find much information on the Internet about this problem, and I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling Firefox - but nothing helped.

How can I provide a "safe socket path in '/tmp'" for Firefox?

Answer 1

/tmp should have the sticky bit set, so

sudo chmod 1777 /tmp

chmod 777 / wouldn't change permissions on /tmp though, unless the command actually had the -R switch too. If you did have -R on that chmod, and even if you were quick in aborting it, you've likely hosed your system to the point where fixing it will require much more work than a reinstall.

Anyway, using chmod 777 on any file or directory is always wrong. Don't do it. Learn how permissions work and do it properly. See http://mywiki.wooledge.org/Permissions