Hello,

I was trying to remove write permissions on an entire directory, and I used the incorrect command:

chmod 644 -r sites/default

I meant to type

chmod -R 644 sites/default

The result was this:

chmod: cannot access `644': No such file or directory
$ ls -als sites
total 24
4 drwxr-xr-x  5 user group 4096 Jan 11 10:54 .
4 drwxrwxr-x 14 user group 4096 Jan 11 10:11 ..
4 drwxr-xr-x  4 user group 4096 Jan  5 01:25 all
4 d-w-------  3 user group 4096 Jan 11 10:43 default
4 -rw-r--r--  1 user group 1849 Apr 15  2010 example.sites.php

I fixed the permissions on the default folder with $ chmod 644 sites/default But, the following ls shows a all the files with red backgrounds and question marks. I can't access any files unless I am root.

$ ls -als sites/default
total 0
? ?--------- ? ? ? ?            ? .
? ?--------- ? ? ? ?            ? ..
? ?--------- ? ? ? ?            ? default.settings.php
? ?--------- ? ? ? ?            ? files
? ?--------- ? ? ? ?            ? settings.php

When I log in as root, I can edit all of the files, and their permissions appear correctly. I do not know how to undo the damage caused by using -r with chmod instead of -R.

Any Suggestions?