What's wrong with my cat command?

Question

I lent a friend a computer with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on it, and he messed up the cat command.

$ cat testfile.txt
cat: meow!
$

Can someone tell me how to fix this? please?

Output of which cat:

/bin/cat

Try `which cat`. If it says something like "siamese" or other cat's species, you friend is a genius. Otherwise, copy the output in your question. — Rmano, Mar 31 '14 at 23:02
Please add the results of `file /bin/cat` and `ls -l /bin/cat*`. By the way, your "friend" had root access, doesn't he? — Rmano, Mar 31 '14 at 23:14
Ah... he did have root access. I checked the file contents: `echo "cat: meow"` — TheDoctor, Mar 31 '14 at 23:15
I didn't expect a question with this title on *this* SE site ... ;-) — Joey, Apr 01 '14 at 08:52

Rmano · Accepted Answer · 2014-03-31T23:29:35.623

21

If he's a friend, he probably did something of the style (as root)(1):

mv /bin/cat /bin/cat.orig 
echo "echo 'cat: meow! '" > /bin/cat
chmod 755 /bin/cat

If he's less of a friend, he omitted the first line.

Asking apt-file

apt-file search -F /bin/cat

says that the package is coreutils. You can probably reinstall it, although I see it as a bit of a dangerous thing...

(1) well, I really would have added alias which="echo cat: is a siamese" to your .bashrc, but well...

edited Mar 31 '14 at 23:29

answered Mar 31 '14 at 23:21

Rmano

2

*If he's less of a friend, he omitted the first line.* I like the way you said that. – Sep 02 '17 at 11:21

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 02 '14 at 04:32

2

It's actually an April Fool's trick. I changed the clock on my Debian box out of April 1st, and it fixed itself. Sick, sick joke...

answered Apr 02 '14 at 04:32

Canadian Luke

2

I changed my date to April 1st and tested it on Ubuntu 12.04, no jokes here. – That Brazilian Guy Apr 02 '14 at 16:27
My `cat` commands are normal today again... Weird, but that's what I found out to fix it :-S – Canadian Luke Apr 02 '14 at 16:36

2 Answers2