sudo: must be setuid root (Mac OS X)

Question

I ran

$ sudo chown -R $USER /usr/bin 

and now when I try to run programs under the /usr/bin path as sudo I get

sudo:must be setuid root

What should I do if I would like to revert the chown?

Answer 1

Run Disk Utility, select your boot volume, and use "Repair Permissions". Since the files in /usr/bin (including sudo) were installed as part of the OS, it knows what their ownership and permissions should be, and it'll set them back properly.

Answer 2

xattr /usr/bin
com.apple.FinderInfo
com.apple.rootless

xattr -d <extended_attribute> /usr/bin

that will remove the attribute, so you can do the commands, then make sure you re-enable the attribute when you are finished:

xattr -w <extended_attribute> /usr/bin

that will re-enable the attribute.

Ozz

Answer 3

You need to chown the files back to root and then chmod u+x all the programs that should be setuid root.

Answer 4

I'm not familiar with OSX but in Linux, you can do it by running su - to login as root and chown -R root /usr/bin.