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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 ?

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  • 2
    Was it recursive?
    – Dennis Williamson
    Commented Nov 10, 2010 at 7:14
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    Yes, it was :( !
    – necromancer
    Commented Nov 10, 2010 at 17:08

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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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 /
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    Double check it's owned by root:root as well.
    – Philip Reynolds
    Commented Nov 10, 2010 at 10:35
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    I've re-installed ubuntu !! now onwards I've to be careful for sudoers users !!!
    – necromancer
    Commented Nov 10, 2010 at 17:09
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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}

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  • for future reference, reinstalling world in ubuntu is apt-get --reinstall install $(dpkg --get-selections|grep install |grep -v deinstall|awk '{print $1}'), fuzzy memory but tested code
    – Behrooz
    Commented Jul 26, 2015 at 6:19

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