[CentOS] How should I reinstall CentOS?

Wed Oct 30 14:14:02 UTC 2013
Denniston, Todd A CIV NAVSURFWARCENDIV Crane <todd.denniston at navy.mil>

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Les Mikesell [mailto:lesmikesell at gmail.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2013 5:25 PM
> To: CentOS mailing list
> Subject: Re: [CentOS] How should I reinstall CentOS?
> 
> On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 3:47 PM, Michael Hennebry
> <hennebry at web.cs.ndsu.nodak.edu> wrote:
> >
<SNIP>
> 
> > I'm not willing to put in another week of
> > effort out of a probably vain hope of discovery.
> 
> You might try running 'rpm -Va' to see if there are any surprises in
> the list of differences between the current state and what was
> installed.
> 
> --
>    Les Mikesell
>     lesmikesell at gmail.com

Note on the rpm -Va... I had an issue recently where a package
(openoffice) would not work correctly and:
yum reinstall openoffice\* #did not help
rpm -Va #did not find ANY issues (which surprised me when I did figure
out what was wrong)

however doing a (I did a more restricted, to openoffice files, version
of)
find /usr/ -not -perm -o+r -exec ls -lhd {} +
find /usr/ -type d -not -perm -g+x -exec ls -lhd {} +
find /usr/ -type d -not -perm -o+x -exec ls -lhd {} +
found files that were not even set to write for ROOT (and in general had
NO permission for anyone else)!
The idea is basically that almost all files in /usr/ should be READABLE
by any user and almost all directories should be READABLE & EXECUTABLE
by all so that they can list and read the files in them.

I don't know if the commands at 
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/reset-rhel-centos-fedora-package-file-perm
ission.html
would have fixed the issue, because I brute forced the perms to root
writeable and then reinstalled the packages again.

BTW, I still feel a little confused on what the OP's original problem
was and why they are headed in the direction of a 'reinstall the
system'.  Seems a bit overkill for most problems.

Even when this disclaimer is not here:
I am not a contracting officer. I do not have authority to make or
modify the terms of any contract.