Unix and Linux Stack Exchange
Unix and Linux Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [system-recovery]

137 questions
172
votes
10 answers

How to chmod without /usr/bin/chmod?

Today I was told a tale by a Unix trainer where the root password got leaked to the students, and one of the fellas removed the execute permission from /usr/bin/chmod itself. How do you recover chmod in this case and make it executable again? Let's…
Sundar R
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54
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1 answer

Change permisions of a file with my cat's help

root@system:~# less myfile -bash: /bin/less: Input/output error The root filesystem is dead. But my cat is still alive (in my memory): root@system:~# cat > /tmp/somefile C^d root@system:~# He's kind of lonely though, all his friends are…
loopbackbee
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40
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5 answers

How to recover from a chmod -R 000 /bin?

And now I am unable to chmod it back.. or use any of my other system programs. Luckily this is on a VM I've been toying with, but is there any way to resolve this? The system is Ubuntu Server 12.10. I have attempted to restart into recovery mode,…
jett
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29
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3 answers

Are BusyBox commands truly built in?

I was reading the famous Unix Recovery Legend, and it occurred to me to wonder: If I had a BusyBox shell open, and the BusyBox binary were itself deleted, would I still be able to use all the commands included in the BusyBox binary? Clearly I…
Wildcard
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17
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3 answers

Can't log in because I forgot my user name

My friend had put Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon 64 bit on my computer. Well, I forgot the user name, so I did a search on the Net for "forgot username linux" and came here. I got the suggestion to hit 'e' at the 1st item in GRUB which I did. The…
Rob Ricci
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13
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3 answers

unix - accidentally moved everything under root to /old - Solaris 10

As the headline says everything or almost everything important as root under root (/) was moved to /old on a Solaris 10 machine. So now the typical fault when trying when running commands are Cannot find /usr/lib/ld.so.1 (changed $PATH and also…
propatience
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8
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2 answers

Removed apt-get from Ubuntu; how to recover?

Well my fingers did manage to do sudo apt-get remove libstdc++6 and write, yes. That removed a lot of system files. Is there any way to bring it up working again? I have connected to terminal, and wget is working fine. I managed to ctrl+C when…
Kalmaras
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8
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2 answers

Fix broken permissions on /var (or any other system directory)

Long story short, I destroyed /var and restored it from backup - but the backup didn't have correct permissions set, and now everything in /var is owned by root. This seems to make a few programs unhappy. I've since fixed apt failing fopen on…
jaymmer - Reinstate Monica
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7
votes
4 answers

Recovering Invisible screens and dropdowns on linux

The terminal has gone invisible , although I can type commands and they get executed: Even some firefox download dropdowns are invisible, I can click the items in the drop down list but the list itself is invisible(see the down arrow highlighted…
unixit
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6
votes
1 answer

How can I recover from a `chmod -x chmod`?

Assuming that you can't reach the internet nor reboot the machine, how can I recover from chmod -x chmod ?
José Castro
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5
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2 answers

Can we use Linux Mint ISO to repair Ubuntu's Grub?

A friend of mine is running Ubuntu and got GRUB RESCUE. Can they use Mint ISO to repair their Grub? As I don't have Ubuntu ISO?
Ashu_FalcoN
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4
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2 answers

What is the proper way of backing up raid

I have a two disk server where root is on a mirrored LVM volume, while /boot and /boot/efi are RAID1 partitions. I want to fully backup my server, so that when a disaster happens (both disks fail, or the entire server is gone) I can recover quickly…
ciamej
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4
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1 answer

Did Windows update corrupt a Linux partition?

I have a dual boot system with Linux Mint 18.1 and Windows 10, which I only use occasionally. I booted into Windows 10, and it started applying updates. Upon restarts I was presented with the: error: no such partition. Entering rescue mode... grub…
andyhasit
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4
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1 answer

problem when booting linux server : Too many levels of symbolic links

By mistake, I executed these commands : sudo ln -sf bash /bin/sh sudo ln -sf bash /bin/bash When I rebooted the Linux server in recovery mode I got this message: init : Failed to spawn friendly-recovry pre-start process: unable to execute: Too many…
Ellouze Anis
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4
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1 answer

I can't access the root account anymore: user is not in the sudoers file

Accidentally removed my gnome desktop and am stuck in tty1. Trying to reinstall the desktop and keep getting the error "user is not in the sudoers file". Having trouble adding my user, new to debian and am not sure how to correctly open/edit sudoers…
Jake
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