*BSD News Article 95624


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From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@FreeBSD.org>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: PANIC - At the end of the rope
Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 03:47:21 -0700
Organization: Walnut Creek CDROM
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To: "Q. Wade Billings" <blitz@axxis.com>
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:41144

Q. Wade Billings wrote:
> login: setgroups: Operation not permitted

Oh my.  This looks like you've wiped some very important permission bits
off what is probably a *large* number of files.  To put it another way:
You're toast, dude.

> tcsh: Permission denied.

Yep, looks likely.  If you've got stuff from /usr/bin to /usr/local/bin
with bad perms then it's not likely that a single chmod or chown is
going to get you back to health.  Why don't you simply restore /bin,
/sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin and /usr/local/bin from backup?

And if you have it in mind to respond "what backup?" then let me just be
the first in a long line of people in this newsgroup who will queue up
to say "Bad admin!  Bad, bad admin!  No cola!" :-)

At this point I'd just back up my user files and reinstall the system
from scratch, restoring your user files onto the new machine and
tweaking /etc to taste, based on the contents of the old?  It just seems
silly to spend weeks agonizing over a bleeding foot when it's so much
easier to have an entirely new set of feet installed in a single night's
labor with tape drive and a nearby FreeBSD FTP mirror or CD, and I'd
have had this system reinstalled (on the "just to be sure" principle) on
the 2nd night, if not the first.

And finally, if you don't have a tape drive available then your company
is ill-equipping you for the job at hand (to put it very, very mildly)
and you should go nail a purchase requisition for one to your boss's
forehead first thing in the morning.  I recommend 8mm drives for
production work.

-- 
- Jordan Hubbard
  FreeBSD core team / Walnut Creek CDROM.