Can't sudo

[Derek Broughton]

Nick Stinemates wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 12, 2008 at 03:53:42PM -0700, Karl Larsen wrote:
>> Ben Coppin wrote:
>> >
>> > 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

Look, I know the whole world now thinks Ruby is the ultimate computer
language, but it's a little extreme to call an installation without
Ruby "minimal" :-)  

>> > graphical user interface (as far as I can tell). 

This begins to sound like the install quite finished.

>>     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 :-)

> Short of loading a live cd and chrooting, what are his options in this
> case if he does not know the root password?

Indeed.  It's not possible to give root a password from the "ben" account if
ben can't sudo.  And there's no good reason _to_ give root a password if
ben _can_ sudo.

It _should_ be possible to reboot into single-user mode, but since ben can't
sudo, I'm not even sure that would work.
-- 
derek