I'm currently running Debian(Wheezy) - recently wanted to set some file permissions to open using chmod -R 777 *
. I know it's often frowned upon but it was just some code that I needed to view. However when doing it from terminal I took it for granted that I was in the right directory. Turns out I threw that command whilst in File System and therefore set ALL my system to open.
Apart from the obvious security flaw, it also caused bugs within the system, particularly using su
or sudo
won't work as the files permission in /usr/
have changed.
I read it's simply better to re-install the system over again. I don't mind doing that, however I'd like to ask how may I do it without losing any of the files that I currently have in my harddrive?