messed up permissions

f0K5 · June 11, 2010, 6:49pm

I’m an idiot !!!
I was trying to edit some files in /usr . so I did “chown -R username /usr” as root . after editing, I did “chown -R root /usr” !!! it made me unable to open Yast and VirtualBox and many other features and applications . is there anyway to fix this ? I think some files in /usr was not owned by root, which I accidentally made them
I don’t want to re-install my linux

gogalthorp · June 11, 2010, 7:52pm

Ouch AFAIK the only practical way is to reinstall. You can keep your personal settings and data by NOT formating the home partition.

:’(

FeatherMonkey · June 11, 2010, 8:04pm

Not true but I can’t remember the exact how but this is going in the right direction.

How to: Linux reset the permissions of the installed rpm packages with –setperms option

What I think you’ll need to do is do a rpm -qf for loop collect the package name then continue with the set permissions(Or reset all might be an option).

gogalthorp · June 11, 2010, 8:18pm

Cool did not know that command. RPM is always surprising me.

lol!

DenverD · June 11, 2010, 8:18pm

f0K5 wrote:
> I’m an idiot !!!

the easiest and most simple way to edit files owned by root is to (for
example) launch KWrite with superuser powers (and LEAVE the file
permissions alone!)

that is really simple to do:


kdesu kwrite

where did you learn to change file owner so you could edit as a
regular user??? go back there and tell them to jump off a cliff…