emergency - lost identity

[Larry Hartman]

Reloading Kubuntu seems a bit overkill, have you tried restarting in recovery 
mode?  ...logs in automatically as root.  At the prompt you can add your 
previous username and assign it to appropriate groups, specifically admin.  
Restart back in normal mode and test settings.

Someone please correct me if I am wrong or misunderstood the issue.  Hate to 
see a reload if it could be avoided....lots of man-hours lost.

Larry

On Saturday 17 March 2007 09:59:07 pm Arthur Dyck wrote:
> I seem to have lost my user identity and password and su access.  Is there
> any way of restoring these?  I am using Kubuntu Dapper.
>
> When I try to go into Users and Groups go into Administrator Mode, I get
> "Su returned with an error"
>
> The diagnostics is:
>
> Possible reasons:
>
> An error occurred during your last KDE upgrade leaving an orphaned  control
> module.
>
> You have old third party modules lying around .
>
> Check these points carefully and try to remove the module mentioned in the
> error message.  If this fails, consider contacting  your distributor or
> packager."
>
> If need be, can I reinstall Kubuntu while leaving my data files intact?  I
> am trying to back them up but K3b has frozen and I can't even get my CD
> drive to open.
>
> Arthur