Had an idiot "fix" a permission problem by running "sudo chmod -R 777 /"
And that is why sudo privileges were removed for the vast majority of people.
this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2025
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Oh... That sounds like a nightmare. How do you even fix that? There's no "revert the entire filesystem's permissions to default" button that I'm aware of
You restore the system from backup
If you are lucky your system is atomic or has other roll back feature. Otherwise it's reinstall time.
I guess you could set up a fresh system, run a script that goes through each folder checking the permission and setting it on the target system.
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Shared this before, but someone I know did a chmod on /bin which nuked all the SUID/GUID bits which borked the system lol.
Surpsingly easy enough to undo by getting a list of the correct perms from a working system, but hilarious nonetheless
seems reasonable to me, root is just a made up concept and the human owns the machine.
as a GUI pleb i just doubleclick the file, which opens kate.
i edit the file and click save, get asked for my password
and all is fine.
that's way too simple, the linux gods demand more esoteric suffering
How dare you use computers to do stuff the way they were invented for?
A fellow nano user! There are dozens of us!
Hell yeah gotta embrace the pain of using archaic key bindings that you'll forget until the next time you need to edit a file in the terminal, you must suffer like man. Modem and sane terminal editors are for pussies! If it doesn't load in 0.01 ms it's bloated.. Whatever you do don't install anything like micro, just keep suffering!
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sudo chmod -R 777 /
It's safe because it's sudo! Like sudo rm -rf /*
At one of my prior positions they outsourced all the junior engineers to this firm that only had windows desktop support experience.
Actual escalation I got:
contractor: I am trying to remove this file that is filling the drive but it won't let me
me: show me what you are doing.
contractor (screenshot): # rm -f /dev/hdc
another one did rm -rf /var to clear a stuck log file, which at least did solve the problem he was having.
After that I sent out an email stating that I would not help anyone who used he rm command unless they consulted with a senior first. I was later reprimanded for saying I wouldn't help people.
I was later reprimanded for saying I wouldn't help people.
I've heard that before. "No. I won't close the circuit breaker while you're holding the wires." "Boss!..."
Back in the olden days we used to nfs mount every other machines file system on every machine. I was root and ran "rm -rf /" instead of "./".
After I realized that it was taking too long, i realized my error.
Now for the fun part. In those days nfs passed root privileges to the remote file system. I took out 2.5 machines before I killed it.
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You wonβt be able to do certain things. Either .ssh or ~ expects certain exact permissions and pukes if itβs different, IIRC
Yep. I fucked up once when I meant to type chmod for something but with "./" but I missed the ".". It was not good.
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Getting flashbacks of me trying to explain to a mac user why using sudo "to make it work" is why he had a growing problem of needing to use sudo... (more and more files owned by root in his home folder).
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why tho?
If it's a file I have to modify once why would I run:
sudo chmod 774 file.conf
sudo chown myuser:myuser file.conf
vi file.conf
sudo chown root:root file.conf
sudo chmod 644 file.conf
instead of:
sudo vi file.conf
Inane. Intentionally convoluted, or someone following the absolute worst tutorials without bothering to understand anything about what they're reading.
I have questions:
- Why are your configurations world readable?
- Why are you setting the executable bit on a .conf file?
- Why change the files group alongside the owner when you've just given the owner rxw and you're going to set it back?
- If it was 644 before, why 774?
- Why even change the mode if you're going to change the ownership?
- Why do you want roots vimrc instead of your users
- Why do you hate sudoedit
- Why go out of your way to make this appear more convoluted than it actually is?
Even jokey comments can lead to people copying bad habits if it's not clear they're jokes.
This was a joke right? I was baited by your trolling?
I felt kinda bad doing that at first. then your absolute rage made my doubt's melt away.
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sudo = shut up dammit, obey!
obligatory... (well, you know the rest)
personally, I prefer the good ol double bang (!!), but whatever floats yer boat, and all that.
There are many people who appreciate a double bang.
I mean if you double bang me I'm likely to do whatever you want, too.
sudo dolphin
Then I act like a Windows user and go there via the GUI because I didn't feel like learning how to use nano.
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You meant sudo vim, ok?
(disclaimer: joke. Let the unholy war start)
Do people really war over nano vs vi?
I get the vi vs emacs war, but are people really willing to die on a hill over nano?
Not willing to die over this comment. Hear me out for a second. I recognize how powerful vi (is it neovim these days?) is. But I could never play games with those awful hjkl keys for navigation, I hate them. Also, I don't have to memorize nano. All the key combos are listed on the bottom. So it requires less mental load.
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Sorry, user babe is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported
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You mean sudoedit right? Right?
edit:
While there's a little bit of attention on this I also want to beg you to stop doing sudo su - and start doing sudo -i you know who you are <3
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If your file is not in your home directory, you shouldn't do chmod or chown in any other file
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