Disclaimer: Do not run this command.

  • palordrolap@fedia.io
    6·
    2 months ago

    Obligatory DO NOT RUN THIS ON YOUR COMPUTER (or anyone else’s).

    You’d think with fully open permissions, everything would work better, but many programs, including important low level things, interpret it as a sign of system damage and will refuse to operate instead.

    If you do run it, you’d better have a backup or something like Timeshift to bail you out, and even if you do have that, it’s not worth trying it just to see what will happen.

    It’s not quite as bad as deleting everything because you can boot from external media and back up non-system files after the fact, but the system will almost certainly not work properly and need to be repaired.

    You have been warned.

    • LastYearsIrritant@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      New guy at work ran this to try to fix permissions on his home folder, accidentally ran it on root (both would have been bad)

      Several highly paid and experienced Linux admins finally just gave up and deleted the server and built a new one from the backups.

        • rtxn@lemmy.worldM
          1·
          2 months ago

          One of our servers is a rotting carcass being kept alive by our collective prayers. It runs Windows 7 and custom software whose developer is dead and the source is missing, nothing has been updated for over a decade, and it has its own independent UPS because once it goes down, it has an extremely slim chance of recovering, and we’re afraid to test it. It controls the card entry system into the building, including the server room. Boss doesn’t want to replace it because we’d have to replace all of the terminals and controllers too, and it hasn’t catastrophically failed yet.

          You’re right. It’s not a pet. It’s like one of the Saw movies: if it dies, we’re all fucked.

          • Log in | Sign up@lemmy.world
            1·
            2 months ago

            So… the dead server controls who is even able to enter the building? Wow. That is one big juggernaut of a problem heading for you.

            • BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.ukEnglish
              1·
              2 months ago

              Typically a brick can control who can enter the building. Security man the doors for a few days until the new system is in.

  • Hotzilla@sopuli.xyz
    1·
    2 months ago

    I did chmod -R 666 / when I started playing with Linux in 1999. It did not end well.

    Sudo didn’t really exist back then, you ran things as root like real men. /s

      • Hotzilla@sopuli.xyz
        1·
        2 months ago

        6 permission mean read+write, but no execution rights. So you cannot execute any commands and system bricks itself.

        • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          2 months ago
          • sudo is telling the computer to do this with root privileges.
          • chmod sets permissions.
          • Each digit of that three-digit number corresponds to the owner, the group, and other users, respectively. It’s 0–7, where 0 means no access and 7 means access to read, write, and execute. So 077 is the exact inverse of 700, where 077 means “the owner cannot access their own files, but everyone else can read, write, and execute them”. Corresponding 700 to asexuals is joking that nobody but the owner can even so much as touch the files.
          • / is the root directory, i.e. the very top of the filesystem.
          • The -R flag says to do this recursively downward; in this case, that’s starting from /.

          So here, we’re modifying every single file on the entire system to be readable, writable, and executable by everyone but their owner. And yes, this is supposed to be extremely stupid.