Re: accidentally changed the owner of sudo

"chown -R <user> /" is _almost_ as bad as 'rm -rf /'.  This happened to me once due to  an unguarded condition in a script.  A restore was the only option.  Of course, if you have a similar system and root, you could always compare ownerships and fix it.  Either way, you're in for a long day.

=G=

________________________________________
From: sudo-users <[email protected]> on behalf of Shawn McMahon <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, September 1, 2017 11:09 AM
To: Tingyu Lu
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [sudo-users] accidentally changed the owner of sudo

EXTERNAL

The "chown" command you typed cannot have changed file permissions, but
would (if left uninterrupted) have changed file ownership throughout the
system. The error you received suggests file permissions changed, and the
"ll" output shows permissions wrong but ownership correct (possibly,
depending on distribution). Therefore, more has happened here than you've
provided.

You'll have to be root to fix the sudo permissions, either by using "su" to
become root (requires the root password), logging directly into the system
as root (requires the root password), or booting into single user mode.
However, depending on how long you let that "chown -R" run, and what other
commands you ran that you've left out, it may be the least of your
problems. Restoring a backup may be necessary.


On Thu, Aug 31, 2017 at 10:46 AM, Tingyu Lu <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hello,
> I accidentally typed " *sudo chown -R <MyUserName> /*"
> when I type "*ls -l*", I got:
>
> total 80
> drwxrwxr-x  6 heat heat 4096 2017-08-15 16:16 build
> drwxr-xr-x  2 heat heat 4096 2017-04-12 15:36 Desktop
> drwxr-xr-x  2 heat heat 4096 2017-04-12 15:36 Documents
> drwxr-xr-x  3 heat heat 4096 2017-05-18 23:44 Downloads
> drwxrwxr-x  3 heat heat 4096 2017-04-21 01:03 espresso
> -rw-r--r--  1 heat heat  179 2017-04-12 15:33 examples.desktop
> drwxrwxr-x  2 heat heat 4096 2017-06-07 02:50 jhe17
> drwxrwxr-x  2 heat heat 4096 2017-05-16 11:44 jliu38
> drwxrwxr-x  3 heat heat 4096 2017-05-30 17:26 kkim15
> drwxrwxr-x  5 heat heat 4096 2017-04-21 00:05 lammps
> drwxrwxr-x  3 heat heat 4096 2017-08-31 10:50 lammps11-Aug2017
> drwxrwxr-x  3 heat heat 4096 2017-08-28 20:52 lammps_cpu
> drwxr-xr-x  2 heat heat 4096 2017-04-12 15:36 Music
> drwxr-xr-x  2 heat heat 4096 2017-04-12 15:36 Pictures
> drwxr-xr-x  2 heat heat 4096 2017-04-12 15:36 Public
> *-rw-rw-r--  1 heat heat   38 2017-04-25 15:22 sudo*
> drwxr-xr-x  2 heat heat 4096 2017-04-12 15:36 Templates
> drwxrwxr-x 13 heat heat 4096 2017-08-28 20:40 tlu3
> drwxr-xr-x  2 heat heat 4096 2017-04-12 15:36 Videos
> drwxrwxr-x  2 heat heat 4096 2017-04-21 11:49 wzhang42
>
> Here, "heat" is my username.
>
> When I type *"ll /usr/bin/sudo"*, I got* "-rwxr-xr-x 2 root root 168768
> 2013-02-27 15:54 /usr/bin/sudo*"*
>
> When I type "*sudo*", I got *"sudo: must be setuid root"*
>
> *Could you please kindly help me with the problem?*
>
> Thanks,
> Tingyu
>
> --
> Best Regards,
> Tingyu Lu
> Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
> 911 Oval Dr. - 3404 EBIII
> North Carolina State University
> Raleigh, NC 27695
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