Re: [tlug] Whoops... messed up home directory permissions

[Scott Robbins <scottro@example.com>]

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On Thu, Apr 20, 2006 at 01:38:49PM +0900, Dave M G wrote:
> TLUG,
> 
> 
> Some advice a guy gave me was to set the permissions of my home 
> directory so that no one can write to it, and see if any process throws 
> an error when trying to create the unwanted file.
> 
> I tried that, and found I could not log into my own account.

Heh, I think many people have been there, done that, got the tshirt--not
necessarily the same error, but, "Hrrm, let's fix this.....oops."

> 
> Eventually, I booted to a prompt, used sudo to chmod the directory to 
> 777, and then I could log in.
> 
> But when I logged in, it told me that my home directory should not be 
> readable or write-able by everyone, and that I should set the 
> permissions to 644.


> 
> So I went into a terminal, and set the permissions of /home/dave to 644.
> 
> And then again I couldn't start any programs, save any data, or log in.

Now, one thing that happens is the directory itself might be 644 but the
files in it might still be something else.  Also, usually a directory
should be 7whatever, giving the owner read write and exec.  Standard
default permissions are usually 755 or 744.  As was explained in another
email 7 is read write exec, 4 is read.  (5 is read and exec--read is 4,
write is 2 and exec is 1).

I would do 755 at most.  If everything works, well and good, if not you
might have to use chmod -R (in FreeBSD, it might be -r in Linux--it
means recursive, in other words, change the permissions of the files in
the directory as well as the directory itself.  

Hope this helps.  As I said most of us have been through the experience
of fix one thing and break another.  Your attitude towards everything is
really quite good, you seem to be, in a way at least, enjoying the
learning.  Yes, we do realize it's frustrating, especially in a
theoretically Just Works(TM) distro like Ubuntu.
 


- -- 

Scott Robbins

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