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?