rawhide startup "mysteries" - solved

[Michal Jaegermann]

After recent updates various daemons refused to start in a boot
sequence.  That included hald and that means that various other
things were really unhappy too as they depend on it.

A prolonged head scratching and search eventually revealed that
_something_, and I have no idea what, changed permissions on
/etc and /boot from 0755 to 0700.  A modification on /boot is likely
not that important but with /etc that means that anything which
tried to get some information from there while not running as 'root'
was not going too far.  Restoring orignal permits really helped
and now all services are starting like expected.

Did anybody see something like that and have some clues about what
really happened here?  Surely I was NOT modifying those permits
myself.

BTW - gdb appears to be seriously broken.  At least on x86_64.  Is
this known?  It does not return to "(gdb)" prompt at breakpoints,
until explicitily interrupted, every stepping command caused only
"Cannot find bounds of current function" message and gud mode in
emacs, probably because the above, does not show any sources
anymore or much else of anything for that matter.

I cannot check what bugzilla has to say about this as attempts to
search for "gdb" in a simple search are bringing only "You are not
authorized to access bug #106167." in big letters on a red
background and "advanced search" appears to be completely shot for a
change and displays only Bugzilla components - no matter what.

    Michal