Can't sudo

[Nick Stinemates]

On Tue, Feb 12, 2008 at 03:53:42PM -0700, Karl Larsen wrote:
> Ben Coppin wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I've just installed Ubuntu for the first time, and I'm having some problems.
> >
> > First of all, I seem to have ended up with some kind of minimum install -
> > ruby is not installed, for example, and neither is any kind of graphical
> > user interface (as far as I can tell). More importantly, though, I can't
> > sudo. As far as I know, I only created one user when I installed - the user
> > is called ben. When I'm logged in as ben, if I try to sudo I get this:
> >
> > ben is not in the sudoers file.  This incident will be reported.
> >
> > As a result, I can't do anything at all on the machine. I'm guessing I must
> > have done something dumb when installing, but I don't know what it was! Can
> > anyone help?
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Ben
> >
> >   
>     Hi Ben I think your ben login may not be complete. You must have a 
> password for ben so you can log in. I would go to System Administration 
> Users and groups and check both your ben user and give root a password 
> you know. Now your better off :-)
> 
> 
> Karl
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> 	Karl F. Larsen, AKA K5DI
> 	Linux User
> 	#450462   http://counter.li.org.
>    PGP 4208 4D6E 595F 22B9 FF1C  ECB6 4A3C 2C54 FE23 53A7
> 
> 
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Short of loading a live cd and chrooting, what are his options in this case if he does not know the root password?

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