| Stephen Gran on Sun, 17 Nov 2002 13:23:22 -0500 |
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On Sun, Nov 17, 2002 at 12:34:17PM -0500, gabriel rosenkoetter said: > On Sun, Nov 17, 2002 at 11:56:08AM -0500, Stephen Gran wrote: > > 'permission denied' as root is a bad sign, and can mean either a > > rooted box, or a corrupted filesystem. I'm kind of banking on bad > > hardware, though. > > While I may agree with your diagnosis (though I'd be checking for file > system damage first, hardware second), getting a "permission denied" > message as the root user shouldn't shock you. root can't write to a > read-only file system; root can't just traipse through kernel memory > (or shouldn't be able to, but the IA32 MMU is broken in such a way > that you *can't* protect memory properly and be able to use a video > card for user-level programs... like, say, XF86-- aperature X drives > are a lousy hack that doesn't actually protect you anyway); root can't > arbitrarily read or write processor registers; root can't raise > hardware interrupts (even by way of pseudo-devices). > > root may be the super-user, but he's still just a user in the > kernel/user OS division. > > -- > gabriel rosenkoetter > gr@eclipsed.net Shock might be too strong a word for my reaction - more like upset. You are correct about the limitations of root, but he's getting these errors on regular files (libs and such) and that's why it raised my eyebrows. Sorry for the confusion. And, back to Mike - if it's 'just' the /usr/ partition trashed, it may be salvable if you can get dpkg --get-selections to spit out to a file. You can try booting with the rescue CD, reformatting that partition, and reading back in your package selections with a combination of dpkg --set-selections and apt-get install --reinstall. Painful, but it may be easier than a full reinstall. Good luck with it, -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |Stephen Gran | "No problem is so formidable that you can't | |steve@lobefin.net | walk away from it." -- C. Schulz | |http://www.lobefin.net/~steve | | | | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Attachment:
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