root directory permissions changed to 777 by mistake whats now?

Question

By Mistake on Ubuntu 9.04 my colleague has changed the permissions to 777 on root directory (/)

whats the best way to recover the permissions ?

Answer 1

If he did not chmod -R the Directory Root - don't panic. Changing back the root directories permission to default can be achieved via:

chmod 755 / 

Answer 2

if it's recursive , you could mount a new ubuntu installation and make a script which compares default permissions for every file with yours. Of course it cannot work for files other than the basic installation. For the extra files you could reinstall the "world" (I borrow the term from gentoo, i don't how it's called in Ubuntu) {It's the file which says what packages are installed on your system}