On Fri, 2008-04-04 at 13:48 -0700, Bruce Hyatt wrote: > --- Patrick O'Callaghan <pocallaghan@xxxxxxxxx> 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
