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 Mon, 22 Feb 2010 21:17:29 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Scott Carpenter http://www.movingtofreedom.org/2006/11/11/how-was-your-round-of-gnu-linux-part-1/comment-page-1/#comment-476 Scott Carpenter 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-page-1/#comment-474 Tony Lawrence 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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