On Tue 25 Jan 2022 at 04:22:39 (+0000), Gareth Evans wrote: > On Tue 25 Jan 2022, at 04:10, Polyna-Maude Racicot-Summerside > <deb...@polynamaude.com> wrote: > > On 2022-01-24 23:03, Gareth Evans wrote: > >> Jan 25 01:46:52 qwerty systemd-tmpfiles[1340]: Detected unsafe path > >> transition / → /var during canonicalization of > >> /var/log/journal/7f684579096949909ba2bfac31e8423e/sy> > >> Jan 25 01:46:52 qwerty systemd[1]: Finished Create Volatile Files and > >> Directories. > >> > >> Googling "Detected unsafe path transition during canonicalization" led me > >> to > >> > >> https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=260924 > >> > >> where a user sees this error because / is owned by the user rather than > >> root. > >> > >> Lo and behold > >> > >> $ stat / > >> > >> shows this is what has somehow happened. > >> > >> $ sudo chown root:root / > >> > >> solves the disappearing /var/run/utmp problem (and fixes who/users) > >> > >> There is nothing in bash history to suggest I did this - can/should it > >> happen any other way? > > > No one other than you know the whole story behind what happened with > > your computer. > > > > Is it a new clean install > > How did you partition the hard drive > > etc.. > > The last clean installation was of Buster and it's since been upgraded to > Bullseye. > > An unfinished and accidentally-executed > > sudo chown /[some/file] > > doesn't seem impossible, but the lack of any such thing in bash history seems > curious. Perhaps a leading space crept in too, which would exclude the > command from the history. > > I was just wondering about other ways that could happen, if any.
A frequent way, sometimes narrated in Operator Horror Stories from years ago, was untarring an archive. Gnu tar does its best to protect you, but can be overridden. But my Q1 is always "What were the ownerships and permissions before you reverted them?" That's often the best clue. Eg, from just yesterday: https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2022/01/msg00874.html caused by restoring backups from amanda. Cheers, David.
