Root user permission

[Art Edwards]

smithveg wrote:
>> You can use sudo if you are part of the sudo group (see the files
>> /etc/group and /etc/group-) If you installed ubuntu then you are already
>> part of the sudo group. To accomplish any administrative task such as
>> apt-get update, you have to issue
>>  the root
> 
> 
> What do you means (see the files /etc/group and /etc/group-)
> 
> I can't see such directories in my filesystem :-/
> 
If you can't see these files your system is probably in trouble.
Directories and files have owner and group designation. Just to an ls -l
in any directory and you should see something like this:

theory/etc/skel>ls -l
total 12
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root 1024 2006-10-27 09:48 ./
drwxr-xr-x 132 root root 6144 2006-10-29 23:20 ../
-rw-r--r--   1 root root  220 2006-04-21 16:51 .bash_logout
-rw-r--r--   1 root root  414 2006-04-21 16:51 .bash_profile
-rw-r--r--   1 root root 2227 2006-04-21 16:51 .bashrc
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root   26 2006-10-24 02:52 Examples ->
/usr/share/example-content/

root owns all of the files and directories and the group is also root.
The groups are associated with a group number that is defined in group
and group- (a shadow file that is only readable and writable with root
privileges.) If you don't have any group files, your system can't make
proper translations. Furthermore, you can use the group directories to
make users part of groups such as sudo, audio, and cdrom.

in /etc. issue the following

ls | grep group

if nothing comes back you should worry.

Art Edwards