Lost Root, what to do

Leaf grove.warden at gmail.com
Wed Apr 6 23:44:43 UTC 2005


On Wednesday 06 April 2005 17:45, Frederik Dannemare wrote:
> On Wednesday 06 April 2005 23:58, Abdullah Ramazanoglu wrote:
> > Leaf wrote:
> > > On Wednesday 06 April 2005 11:29, Abdullah Ramazanoglu wrote:
> >
> >   --8<--
> >
> > > Well I did as you suggested, rebooted and had many errors trying to
> > > login (can't start dcop, something about it and dhcppc 0, x server
> > > grumbles and finally KDE failed to start followed by an error about
> > > Konserve).  I went back and found group.bak and something else I
> > > now forget.  Used those backups, still failed.
> >
> >   --8<--
> >
> > I went the same route as you and managed to recover root. Here is the
> > detailed account of what I've done. Perhaps the culprit is in some
> > minor detail, so you can see where our methods differ.
> >
> > 0. Backed up with:  cp -a /etc/{passwd,shadow,group} /root
> >
> > 1. Went to Kuser and deleted root. Kuser didn't mind accepting my
> > request and happily deleted root (a bug, IMHO). It asked whether to
> > delete also the home dir (/root) and mailbox (/var/mail/root).
> >
> > 2. In another pop-up dialog it asked whether to delete the user's
> > private group (root). I let it delete also the root group.
> >
> > 3. System busted. Nothing sudo related works. Rebooted again into
> > Kubuntu, without a root, to test and proliferate the situation
> > if/where applicable.
>
> [ ... ]
>
> I took the liberty of submitting a report to bugzilla with your
> comments: <https://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=8736>
> --
> Frederik Dannemare | http://sentinel.dk | http://linuxworlddomination.dk
> http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=Frederik+Dannemare
> http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/FrederikDannemare
> Key fingerprint = 30CF 7AD3 17D9 1A63 A730  ECA6 0D4C 2C97 9D9A 238E

Thanks for the info and help.  I am convinced this is a KDE issue (KUser), and 
not as much a bug as something that should be looked at for a possible change 
(the ability to delete root from KUser).  I am not sure why/how I had a new 
user assigned UID 0, nor why when removing that user KUser removed root.  If 
those aren't bugs then they should be looked at for possible changes.

I appreciate the offer  for a new root dir but I am gonna take a break from 
kubuntu for a few days and check back with the final release and do a fresh 
start and see how things work.  I was fully up to date though, but had 
installed from the Preview and any cracks that may have persisted could have 
contributed to my issue.




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