sudo and all admin accounts disabled?

[Michael R. Head]

On Sat, 2006-08-26 at 20:48 -0500, Jordan Miller wrote:
> we have the latest ubuntu installed. everything was working fine. all  
> of a sudden, we have no superuser access. all admin accounts that  
> were previously working fine now have no ability to run sudo or sudo - 
> s with the error that these usernames are not in the sudoers file.  
> However, I know they were all admin accounts when they were setup. I  
> know this is not simply someone taking away my privileges because I  
> setup all admin accounts and have checked each one and they are all  
> not allowed to do a sudo or a sudo -s.
> 
> do i need to do a reinstall? Please advise.

No, though should be recoverable. As Schalken said, you'll need to boot
to recovery mode. If you don't see that selection a few moments after
you turn on your computer, you should at least see a line that says
"Press ESC for boot menu". Press escape and you'll see the menu. There
should be at least one entry that has (recovery mode) mentioned. Select
that entry and press return. In a few moments, you'll have a root prompt
from which you can manually edit /etc/sudoers, say with the nano
program:
# EDITOR=nano sudo visudo
double check that you have this line in the file:
%admin  ALL=(ALL) ALL

If it's there, already, you may want to simply add your user account on
a new line, for example:
burner ALL=(ALL) ALL

mike

> thanks,
> Jordan
> 
-- 
Michael R. Head <burner at suppressingfire.org>
suppressingfire.org
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 191 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/attachments/20060827/a1d8f024/attachment.sig>