Set permissions using chmod whilst in the wrong directory

Question

I was doing a magento patch via Terminal and ran the following commands whilst in / rather than /public_html

find . -type d -exec chmod 500 {} \;
find . -type f -exec chmod 400 {} \;
find var/ -type f -exec chmod 600 {} \;

Is there an easy fix for this, or have i messed up my server?

Answer 1

I had some similar issue but not from root folder :s

If you use a RPM-based distro, this can be done using the rpm --setperms command. it would be painfully reverting one by one the packages, on Debian-like system apt-get --reinstall install is your friend.

I'm not shure it will work through all directory thought

Answer 2

You've pretty well hosed your server. The quickest way to recover is going to be to reinstall your OS and restore your backups. You do have backups, right?