chmod 666 ///

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Fri, 2008-04-04 at 13:48 -0700, Bruce Hyatt wrote:
> --- Patrick O'Callaghan <pocallaghan at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > In a Unix (and Linux) pathname any sequence of one or more /
> > characters
> > collapses into a single /.
> > 
> > Thus /// is exactly the same as / so your chmod affects only
> > files in
> > the root directory (and not those beneath it). Which is why I
> > thought /tmp might the cause of the problem.
> 
> In that case, it seems odd to me that executing "chmod 777 ///"
> didn't allow me to startx.

Well, it seemed odd to me, which is why I suggested looking at /tmp, but
that's definitely the meaning of ///. Try this to demonstrate:

ls -l ///////////////////////tmp

Are you sure it wasn't 'chmod -R 666 ///'?

poc