Comments on: How was your round of GNU/Linux? (Part 1) http://www.movingtofreedom.org/2006/11/11/how-was-your-round-of-gnu-linux-part-1/ free software, free culture, free association Fri, 29 Aug 2008 23:35:18 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.11 by: Scott Carpenter http://www.movingtofreedom.org/2006/11/11/how-was-your-round-of-gnu-linux-part-1/#comment-476 Sun, 12 Nov 2006 13:20:35 +0000 http://www.movingtofreedom.org/2006/11/11/how-was-your-round-of-gnu-linux-part-1/#comment-476 Ah! Thank you, Tony. That was exactly the kind of thing I was doing, making changes with both chown and chmod, and I'm pretty sure I was even more drastic than ".*", doing a "-R *" while trying to get us in the same group and with the group to have permissions. I'm glad you pointed that out--it's the kind of thing I'll need to be aware of and to better start "thinking" in Unix. (I do some dev work on Unix/Linux machines for my job, but I'm not given root there.) :-) Ah! Thank you, Tony. That was exactly the kind of thing I was doing, making changes with both chown and chmod, and I’m pretty sure I was even more drastic than “.*”, doing a “-R *” while trying to get us in the same group and with the group to have permissions.

I’m glad you pointed that out–it’s the kind of thing I’ll need to be aware of and to better start “thinking” in Unix. (I do some dev work on Unix/Linux machines for my job, but I’m not given root there.) :-)

]]> by: Tony Lawrence http://www.movingtofreedom.org/2006/11/11/how-was-your-round-of-gnu-linux-part-1/#comment-474 Sun, 12 Nov 2006 12:35:49 +0000 http://www.movingtofreedom.org/2006/11/11/how-was-your-round-of-gnu-linux-part-1/#comment-474 A common mistake that causes this is using chmod or chown with the wrong wildcard. For example, you are logged in as root and sitting in /home/betty. You've just copied in a nice .bashrc and .bash_profile for her when you notice that she doesn't have permission to read them. Oh well, let's make them hers: #THIS NEXT COMMAND IS A MISTAKE! chown betty .* Because .. is matched by ".*", you've just chowned /home in addition to .bash* And then you notice that other people have read access to her .bash files. Well, that's easy: #ANOTHER BAD MISTAKE chown 600 .* Yup, you just totally hosed /home. Lots of peoople have done this: See http://aplawrence.com/Detective/addedusernologins.html A common mistake that causes this is using chmod or chown with the wrong wildcard.

For example, you are logged in as root and sitting in /home/betty. You’ve just copied in a nice .bashrc and .bash_profile for her when you notice that she doesn’t
have permission to read them. Oh well, let’s make them
hers:

#THIS NEXT COMMAND IS A MISTAKE!
chown betty .*

Because .. is matched by “.*”, you’ve just chowned /home
in addition to .bash*

And then you notice that other people have read access to
her .bash files. Well, that’s easy:

#ANOTHER BAD MISTAKE
chown 600 .*

Yup, you just totally hosed /home.

Lots of peoople have done this:
See http://aplawrence.com/Detective/addedusernologins.html

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