[SunHELP] /etc files ownership changed

[Will McDonald]

On 13/09/05, Zakaria  Mattar <zmattar.c at stc.com.sa> wrote:
> All,
>
> By mistake someone changed the ownership for all the files under /etc, now
no
> one can access that system anymore.
>
> Is there anyway to recover /etc?

If you don't have a valid backup and a way to get the backup image
back onto the hosed system then you might be able to get back up from
CD. It could be as simple as the permissions on /etc/passwd being
wrong. If not, chances are you'll be able to get a *mostly* workable
system by chowning everything back to root:root.

Boot single user from a CD or netboot, mount the root filesystem. If
you've got room tar up /etc in its current state. Then try chown -R
/etc to root:root and see if that leaves you in a bootable state.

If this gets the system back in a semi-workable state you'll need to
trawl through  looking for stuff that's broken and fixing their
permissions/ownership as you go.

Will.