I accidentally ran chmod -R g+rw /*

When I was meant to run chmod -R g+rw ./*

It got to /proc before I could stop it. What on earth should I do? The only way I can connect to ssh now is through the lish.

Many thanks.

Problem was fixed ~ sorry for double post.

chmod -R g-w /*

did that, then fixed various things that still didn't work.

For making sure everything is 100% good, your best bet would be to restore from your backups to another Linode, then whip up a script to output the permissions for each file. Run it on both sides and correct any differences. Probably doable with the right set of command line options to ls.

For what it's worth, "*" is a shorter way to say "./*", and leaves less room for typographical errors

Well in my early Linux days I pulled a rm -rf /

I was trying to delete a whole directory and its contents. I was using the full path and I put a space in after the first slash by accident.

It ran for a long time, that is when I realized I deleted the whole server.

Luckily it had a full backup the night before. The call to tech support was I need a restore... all of it!

I was a production system for a school. Email, websites, online learning apps. Took a day to get back up.

I got burned that day and now I know what HOT is.