[mdlug] a chown -R disaster recovery question

[Aaron Kulkis]

mdlug at wowway.com wrote:
> Hello, let's say I have a system where there are hundreds of users, with a
> system of NIS-mapped home dirs such as this:
> 
> /filesystem/vol/users/user1
> /filesystem/vol/users/user2
> /filesystem/vol/users/user3 
> ...
> /filesystem1/vol1/users/userX
> 
> and each user is owner of their own home dir.
> 
> Accidentally, I go through at the level of /filesystem/vol and 
> I chmod -R user1 *   (I know, that was a mistake).
> 
> Is there a way to run back through that and chown everyone back?
> 

Of course, you just use chown again.

#!/bin/bash
TRUNK=/filesystem/vol/users
chown __root?__  $TRUNK

cd $TRUNK
for USER in *
do
   chown -R $USER $USER
done
# end of shellscript.


Put the above text in a file,
chmod that file to mode 755
and then execute that file

for example, say you put it in a file called "chownback"
(put this in some place like /root/bin or /local/bin or /usr/local/bin)

cd /usr/local/bin
cat > chownback   ## cut & past the script text on the next line
                  # then use ctrl-D to end input
chmod 755 chownback
./chownback