Arch Linux

ryeguy146

Member

Registered: 2009-10-28

Posts: 33

Obscure Permissions Problems

Recently, I installed a package from AUR that complained of permissions (filesystem: 755 package: 754) of various folders in /usr. I changed a few to see what the issue was, and now urxvt won't start. I'm not sure exactly what the problem is, but I'm sure it's related as root can start the program, but my user account cannot. When called from the command line, I'm returned the following error:

urxvt: can't initialize pseudo-tty, aborting.
urxvt: error while initializing new terminal instance at /usr/lib/urxvt/urxvt.pm line 1268.

Any ideas? I've tried reinstalling both urxvt and perl, but no results as of yet. Xterm works. I have examined the code in urxvt.pm, but it isn't implicit (to me) what it is trying to accomplish, nor what files it is trying to access.

Last edited by ryeguy146 (2011-01-24 22:16:41)

sand_man

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2008-06-10

Posts: 2,164

Re: Obscure Permissions Problems

Sounds like you might have removed the executable permission from something.
What you saw was just a warning letting you know that the package you installed has different permissions to the parent. Whatever you did, you shouldn't have done. If you know what you changed, reverse it. Otherwise try and reinstall urxvt possibly with a -f (force) option.

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ryeguy146

Member

Registered: 2009-10-28

Posts: 33

Re: Obscure Permissions Problems

I've tried uninstalling (#pacman -Rn) rxvt-unicode and reinstalling it (#pacman -Sf) with no luck. I even tried it with each of its three dependencies and perl (#pacman -Rnd perl gcc-libs libxft / #pacman -Sf perl gcc-libs libxft) with no luck. I would go back and fix the permissions that I had changed, but I have absolutely no idea what they should be, nor which I need to fix. I made the mistake of changing a block at one time without testing extensively or backing up.

Any other ideas?

ryeguy146

Member

Registered: 2009-10-28

Posts: 33

Re: Obscure Permissions Problems

Interesting little adventure I just went through, but the problem is solved. Most of this was self inflicted:

I did some further searching and came across this. Embarrassing that I didn't come across it when I first searched, but such is life. So! I need to reinstall glibc, that sounded simple enough.

Coming from a Windows environment, the best way to reinstall is to first rip out the old installation and to begin anew. This is not the best of ideas in regards to glibc, as I was about to discover.

# pacman -Rnd glibc

I invoked my friend pacman and was alarmed by an error message suggesting that it couldn't find it. That's funny, I literally just used it. Let's ls the... no ls? Alas, one by one my command line friends abandoned me due to my stupidity. The realization of what I had done dawned on me and I reached for the power button.

Arch live to the rescue! I booted in and mounted my root to /mnt and configured the network. Following a sync, I used pacman to install a shiny new copy of glibc into /libs using:

# pacman -S -r /mnt glibc

I rebooted and am now documenting my mistakes and making a backup. Oh yea, and my urxvt is back. That too.

Last edited by ryeguy146 (2011-01-25 04:49:26)

sand_man

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2008-06-10

Posts: 2,164

Re: Obscure Permissions Problems

Interesting little adventure I just went through, but the problem is solved. Most of this was self inflicted:

I did some further searching and came across this. Embarrassing that I didn't come across it when I first searched, but such is life. So! I need to reinstall glibc, that sounded simple enough.

Coming from a Windows environment, the best way to reinstall is to first rip out the old installation and to begin anew. This is not the best of ideas in regards to glibc, as I was about to discover.

# pacman -Rnd glibc

I invoked my friend pacman and was alarmed by an error message suggesting that it couldn't find it. That's funny, I literally just used it. Let's ls the... no ls? Alas, one by one my command line friends abandoned me due to my stupidity. The realization of what I had done dawned on me and I reached for the power button.

Arch live to the rescue! I booted in and mounted my root to /mnt and configured the network. Following a sync, I used pacman to install a shiny new copy of glibc into /libs using:

# pacman -S -r /mnt glibc

I rebooted and am now documenting my mistakes and making a backup. Oh yea, and my urxvt is back. That too.

I happened to remember someone here removing glibc deliberately just to see what would happen. Can't remember who it was now... Allan?
Anyway, we've all done stupid things like this and the best part about it is learning from mistakes. It's good that you knew how to recover with a live disk.

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SolarShado

Member

Registered: 2011-01-24

Posts: 14

Re: Obscure Permissions Problems

Interesting little adventure I just went through, but the problem is solved. Most of this was self inflicted:

I did some further searching and came across this. Embarrassing that I didn't come across it when I first searched, but such is life. So! I need to reinstall glibc, that sounded simple enough.

Coming from a Windows environment, the best way to reinstall is to first rip out the old installation and to begin anew. This is not the best of ideas in regards to glibc, as I was about to discover.

# pacman -Rnd glibc

I invoked my friend pacman and was alarmed by an error message suggesting that it couldn't find it. That's funny, I literally just used it. Let's ls the... no ls? Alas, one by one my command line friends abandoned me due to my stupidity. The realization of what I had done dawned on me and I reached for the power button.

Arch live to the rescue! I booted in and mounted my root to /mnt and configured the network. Following a sync, I used pacman to install a shiny new copy of glibc into /libs using:

# pacman -S -r /mnt glibc

I rebooted and am now documenting my mistakes and making a backup. Oh yea, and my urxvt is back. That too.

Wow... quite a learning experience, eh?

You can probably mark this thread solved now