i typed chown -R ftpuser:ftpuser /
now my system is broken any idea how to fix it
reinstall?
PS linux is powerful
Yes, reinstall…
Unless you have a full backup to restore…yes…reinstall.
Can’t he use root to give back the perms to his user?
You could try yo set al permissions in / to root and then change them in your user folder to $USER that shouldn’t make it worse.
Were you trying to restrict an ftp user?
yes
Well, it’s not as bad as ‘rm -rf /’ and I’ve done that…but your system is basically screwed if the command completed. You’d pretty much never get it right again because it’s all about permissions.