I accidentally removed read, write and execute permissions from the root ("/") directory

Question

I hope you have a solution for that: I wanted to remove permissions to a specific folder with:

sudo chmod -rwx ./

But instead I had executed:

sudo chmod -rwx /

so I had removed all permissions to the root directory instead of the current folder.

Now I don't have access to any command, including sudo. I am on a rpi 4 running on Raspberry PI OS (Raspbian). I have a lot of important things, a pro website with a database. I have one or two backups of one database but not the others... I have a few importants programs without backups.

The OS does not boot actually.

Thank you if you can help me!

Answer 1

This is an issue that cannot be corrected out of the running system. I would advise shutting down the Pi⁽¹⁾, removing the SD card and then attaching it via card-reader to a different computer running Linux (if you have one available). In the following steps, I will call that machine the "recovery machine".

⁽¹⁾ since you probably can't call shutdown anymore, you have to either try an ordered shutdown via the Magic SysRq keystroke Alt+SysRq+REISUB, or if that fails, you will need to perform a hard power-off instead

On your recovery machine:

• Identify the device if necessary. To do so, you could e.g. execute

  ~ # journalctl -f
  

  as root user on your "recovery" machine and check for an entry like

  Okt 29 18:58:31 my-machine kernel: sd 33:0:0:0: [sdb] 62333948 512-byte logical blocks: (31.9 GB/29.7 GiB)
  Okt 29 18:58:31 my-machine kernel:  sdb: sdb1 sdb2
  

  that coincides with your plugging in the SD card. Assuming a standard Raspbian disk layout, the relevant device containing the root partition would be /dev/sdb2.
• As root on the recovery machine, perform an fsck on the partitions of the SD card before mounting any of them:

  ~ # fsck -v /dev/sdb1
  (fsck output)
  ~ # fsck -v /dev/sdb2
  (fsck output)
  

• Mount the root partition of the SD card. It should be the second partition:

  ~ # mount /dev/sdb2 /mnt
  

  If you execute an ls command in the root directory of your recovery machine, the entry for the /mnt mount-point will then look something like

  / # ls -l
  <...>
  d---------  18 root root  4096 Mar 14  2021 mnt
  

  reflecting the completely removed permissions on the / partition of your SD card.
• Re-add the necessary permissions via

  / # chmod 755 /mnt
  

  If you run ls again, the entry should look more familiar, like

  drwxr-xr-x  18 root root  4096 Mar 14  2021 mnt
  

• Afterwards, unmount, plug the card back in the Pi, and boot. It should work again (mainly because it seems that you didn't recursively revoke the rwx permissions).