Help : user.config - needs to be repaired

M

Mark_S

Verified User
Joined
Sep 14, 2006
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Hi hopefully someone can help with my disaster?
If this is in the wrong forum please move

Using Putty as Root ive accidently changed the file permissons sorry owners and now i can no longer log into Diraect Admin Control Panel as Admin (Highest Account).

The error that is being displayed in full is the following.

Unable to determine Usertype user.conf needs to be repaired

How did it happen ?

I typed the following command

chown -R reseller:reseller /

I managed to ctrl + C to stop the process before it got so far, but i imagine that a good chunk of files have had there ownership changed from i guess "root" to "reseller".

Web sites are still up and running and the mysql databases too, so its up and running, but ADMIN can not log in to Direct Admin Control Panel. I suspect the other user accounts to be the same.

I have limited experence and knowledge, and i guess thats why and how it happened. Gutted :

These are the last files that were in my screen before i stopped it.

Code: 
chown: changing ownership of `/proc/11566/task/11566': Operation not permitted
chown: changing ownership of `/proc/11566/task/11566/fd/0': No such device or address
chown: changing ownership of `/proc/11566/fd/0': No such device or address
chown: changing ownership of `/proc/11572': Operation not permitted
chown: changing ownership of `/proc/11572/task/11572': Operation not permitted
chown: changing ownership of `/proc/11572/task/11572/fd/4': No such file or directory
chown: changing ownership of `/proc/11572/task/11572/cwd': Operation not permitted
chown: changing ownership of `/proc/11572/fd/4': No such file or directory
chown: changing ownership of `/proc/11572/cwd': Operation not permitted
chown: changing ownership of `/etc/X11/X': No such file or directory
chown: changing ownership of `/dev/core': Operation not permitted
chown: changing ownership of `/usr/local/include/libpng/libpng12': Too many levels of symbolic links

Any help or guideness to turn this mess around would be very much appreciated.

Mark.
 
Wow, that is very very bad thing to have happen. The only way I know of to repair that is to check, file by file, directory by directory, what the owner/permissions are and match it up against another install to try and repair it. I am not sure if there are any scripts available that will do this for you. My recommendation would to be to back everything up and reformat or possibly (if your dedicated host is nice enough) ask for a new server that matches your own to be setup and transfer everything onto that, make sure it all works then ask them to replace your current server with that one and wipe the old one clean.

Maybe someone else has some insight on repairing this that I haven't heard of though.
 
I dont want to try anything until i get some advice.
minimising the reversal process if at all posible.

I have a system back up from yesturday

I'm hoping that it can be fixed.

Dam typo at the wrong time can really screw your day and night :(

I'm on a Centos 4.3 box
 
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Sorry Marshall i didnt realise you had replied.

Humm.....
I could kick my self, i really could.
Its a dedicated server.

Even if i have to change the files one by one, i will have to do that.

Its what they call learning, but its knowing who owns what?
I suspect at the moment that the directories below root log in are effected, as ive checked

/home/user accounts and they seem to be still owned by themselves.

I just dont know what too do for the best, as ive worked so hard to get the clients i have, and its looks like ive messed it up with one key press :(

Is there any way i can find out the ownerships?

Help : is the word.
 
Does anyone know if there is a log file i can examine that may have recorded the changes ?
 
Looks like a re-install is the only option left to me,
as a reversal of the permissions is so wide spread its impossible to say
what was what and what should be now??

Confused i am.

Thanks for the reply Mashall
 
Reinstall is the best option as you don't know what might have broken from the permission change and what might not. You can still get by with your system being the way it is because it is still running but I would not take the chance. Make sure you have backups of all the data you want to save (config files, client data, etc) before the reinstall so that you can put it all back asap.
 
Mark_S,

See my private message to you; I've got a testbed server you can have the login info for, if it'll help.

Jeff
 
Thank you both Marshall and Jeff, for your advice and offers of help,
its appreciated :)

I'm enquiring if they can install Direct Admin with

Apache 2
Mysql 5
php 5

What can Direct Admin Run with now?
As its been 9 months since my original install.
 
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It should work fine with those, I currently run PHP 5.2.1, MySQL 5.0.37 and apache 2.0.59 on a couple of production servers and have a private server at home running apache 2.2.4, PHP 5.2.2/PHP 4.4.7 (suPHP) and MySQL 5.0.41 on the CentOS 5 beta version. Just use the customapache or custombuild script and it should run fine.
 
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