Fixing chmod -R 777 / This document (7014410) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

Environment SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 Situation root user run the chmod -R 777 / command and all file permissions for the entire system have read/write/execute for every user.

Note: Never run this command Resolution There are two options to fix this issue: Reinstall - Copy off all pertinent data and then wipe the drive and reinstall with an up to date version of SLE. Restore - Restore from a full system backup taken before the change was made. Cause The command chmod -R 777 / makes every single file on the system under / (root) have rwxrwxrwx permissions. This is equivalent to allowing ALL users read/write/execute permissions. If other directories such as home, media, etc are under root then those will be affected as well. This causes a very large security hole for the entire system and should be fixed immediately.