Before installing Arch on a USB flash drive, I disabled ext4 journaling in order to reduce disk reads and writes, being fully aware of the implications (file corruption after unexpected power loss). I was confident that I would never have to pull the plug or the drive without issuing a normal shutdown first. Unfortunately, there was one possibility I hadn’t considered: sometimes, there’s that one service preventing your PC from turning off, and at that stage there’s no way to kill it (besides waiting for systemd to time out, but I was impatient).
So I pulled the plug. The system booted fine, but was missing some binaries. Unfortunately, I couldn’t use pacman to restore them because some of the files it relied on were also destroyed.
This was not the last time I went through this. Luckily I’ve learned my lesson by now
Daaem, I guess the poor dude at the receiving end did not consider it particularly fun. Well, at least they had sbin working, so probably possible to recover without a live cd. Huh, guess who’s now spinning up a VM to check it out 🤣
Checked it out: on arch that results in inability to run tty on reboot, then you’re dropped into initramfs’s rescue shell where you can simply +x new_root’s /usr/bin/* and be back up and running
Linux Mint: removed all taskbars from the desktop. I was hoping it would just allow me to reset them to the default. But in reality, it breaks the GUI and it’s very hard to reset from the GUI. Suddenly my keystrokes weren’t being detected and I couldn’t open up applications with any sort of regularity. After a lot of dicking around, I got the terminal working so I could reset Cinnamon.
It’s not the worst way I’ve broken a machine. But it was one of the most annoying.
One thing I learnt a while back is that if you break your GUI you can always use Ctrl+Alt+F<1-9> to go to different terminals to try to solve it. Worst case scenario I would do something like mv .config .config.bkp and sudo systemctl restart that should hopefully get you back to default settings on the UI.
Source: been there, done that. Not exactly your error but similar enough.
This is where someone tracks down an upgrade path chart you didn’t know existed and points out some goofy intermediary release, not an lts for some reason, that you were supposed to upgrade to first…
You could boot on an USB, mount the filesystem and change the permissions. But if the dude changed a whole lot of permissions, reinstalling might be the smart thing to do…
There’s got to be other tools though that could change the file permissions on chmod, right? Though I suppose you’d need permission to use them and/or download them.
You can dump the permissions from the working system and restore them. Quite useful when working with archives that don’t support those attributes or when you run random stuff from the web 😁
Yeah, a very unfortunate one: probably, the most painful to recover from. I’d just reinstall, honesty 😅 At least with mine I could simply add the necessary stuff from chroot or pacstrap and not spend a metric ton of time tracking all the files with incorrect permissions
@jordanlund@fl42v I think this one could be recoverable if they had a terminal still active by using the dynamic loader to call chmod — or by booting from a liveCD and chmodding from there.
That'd likely get you to a 'working' state quickly, but it'd take forever to get back to a 'sane' state with correct permissions on everything.
Welcome to a larger world. IF you ever need dual boot working well on linux, I found the best robust method is install Windows first, leave space for more partitions. install Linux and make a separate boot efi partition. Many distros offer to probe for foreign OS. this will find windows and add a chainloader entry to grub. Set the Linux partition as the boot one in BIOS/EFI. Grub will start and if you choose Windows it handsover the boot to Windows boot ( and Windows doesn’t know it). Windows will leave your EFi linux boot alone. You can also share a ntfs partition between them if needed
Thats why you have two. windows efi and linux efi on separate partitions. Windows never knows the other one exists and ignores the rest of what it sees as unalloated space. it even lets you shut down a windows update, boot linux and come back to windows later which continues the update. I have been running this way for 7 years, Windows has not touched my other EFi partition.
Should still be fine if you set BIOS/EFI to only boot from the Linux EFI, and it has chainload entry to Windows. If you left it up to some Windows Dual boot thing it will wreck you for sure
I use flatpak for virtually everything because sandboxing your applications from each other and from your private data is a great idea to improve your system security. This helps prevent one compromised app from taking actions that affect the rest of your system.
For example, I have the VLC flatpak and used flatseal to revoke internet access because I only use it to play files. If a file tries to exploit VLC, it will not be able to upload any data or communicate with the attacker’s servers. I revoke any permissions my apps don’t actually need.
There are a few exceptions though. I run development and administrative tools directly because I do actually want unrestricted access to the system for these apps.
Linux has just been far and away the best change I could make. I fully agree about feeling a lot more competent after getting settled into Linux. I started running Manjaro on an old laptop just so I could get used to CLI and general Linux-ness, but it never really “took” until I fully switched my primary pc to Manjaro (and then Fedora and now Nobara). I could kinda use powershell or cmd on windows when I needed to but otherwise nada. Now on Linux, I’m writing shell scripts and running most everything I can in my terminal. I feel like not having every program in existence available and adapted specifically for my OS has forced me to actually understand how my computer works and how to troubleshoot issues.
In addition, The ease of package managers means I can just try whatever software I want without dealing with the annoyance of uninstallers and cleaning up system files and messy directories. It’s easier to start de-googling as well when a lot of the convenience of google services doesn’t exist for me anymore.
Always nice to read so great posts. Welcome to a brand new world of possibilities. I promise your journey will be long but full of self accomplishments, learnings, satisfaction. You will probably run into one or two times when you’ll have to search for a solution but in these situations the Linux community will always be there for you and you’ll feel so proud to have learn something along the way.
You realize how much Linux is different to other OS only when you live with it. There’s a real philosophy, it’s not just some branding wording. If you feel adventurous enough you’ll certainly see your mindset and way of thinking evolving as time goes. You have so much possibilities to discover, I’m jealous of this sentiment of new user you’ll experience. I’ve personaly used to tweak Windows back in the days and its limitations (amongst other things) is one of the main reasons why I switched to Linux. Twenty years later I’m wondering how I didn’t know earlier that another world existed.
Beyond the fact that Linux has improved my workflow drastically compared to my Windows/MacOS colleagues, it also helped me grow intellectually. The best part is that it never ends because there’s always a new tool, app, distro to experiment, play with, and learn from.
Working with a system and not adapting to it or fighting against it is a huge difference. Linux has so many options that you can litterally build the system that fits your specific needs and liking to perfection (and even better than you can think now). It’s just a matter of few efforts. We’re not used to make efforts nowadays and prefer opting for the laziness of being the slaves of a system/brand but I can guarantee you will be rewarded for these efforts beyond your expectations.
I used to be constantly making tweaks to stuff and distrohopping like none other, but in 2018 I finally found THE setup and settled down. These days it’s all about having scripts that set things up exactly how I want them.
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