Best solution for silly error?

[Robert Heller]

At Sat, 26 Jul 2014 05:09:01 +1000 taig at melbpc.org.au,         "Ubuntu user technical support,  not for general discussions" <ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com> wrote:

> 
> Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid
> 
> Initially I ran with one user, with admin privileges etc. Since I always 
> had to enter the main admin password to authenticate some  activities I 
> was of the belief that I was generally NOT operating as ROOT.
> 
> (Please, if someone writes, "yes, that was correct" I'll breathe a big 
> sigh of relief.)
> 
> My Internet activities are mainly email, limited searching etc.
> 
> When I'm not specifically connecting to the Internet for mail etc I turn 
> OFF my Netgear Switch, breaking the Ethernet connection between computer 
> and modem. It doesn't mess up the modem, it's always connected for other 
> activity and the computer itself is not continually exposed to the big 
> bad world outside.
> 
> A week ago I created a new user, Boss, gave him admin privileges then 
> removed admin privileges from the original user.  Now the original user 
> was operating as a regular user with no special powers.  If and when I 
> needed to do something my plan was to do it with the new 'Boss' user.
> That might have been completely unnecessary but something spooked me and 
> it culminated in that decision.
> 
> I rarely boot the machine.  Once a month maybe.
> 
> Anyway in the week since that happened I've tidied up my desk and 
> destroyed the Boss password.  Slack yes, but it WAS written down and 
> next time I booted the machine where passwords are stored it would have 
> been recorded. I'm guilty only of having an unexpected visitor to my 
> home office.
> 
> Yesterday I rebooted and was unable to start UFW. Suddenly I'm operating 
> without an administrator. While this situation prevails I won't be able 
> to update software, install, access some files etc.
> 
> I'm resigned to doing a complete backup, and then reinstalling T/bird, 
> latest FFox browser and many other packages; a frustrating error prone, 
> time consuming PIA that I can well do without.
> 
> Is there a way out?  Can I somehow avoid all that unnecessary work?
> Is there a way to edit a file and restore the privileges I took away 
> from myself last week, or recovering the new password, or something?

This what they make 'rescue' disks for and/or single user mode (depending on
your distro, some systems can be booted into SI without entering a password).
In some cases it is possible to use the kernel 'init=' parameter when booting
-- eg 'init=/bin/bash' which will run bash instead of init: "crude but
effective".

A rescue disk will boot up and (possibly) mount the local file systems and
leave you with a shell running as root. Yes dangerious, but this is only for
emergency use and no, you generally don't have the network up.

At that point, you can repair any 'damage' at that point, from dealing with 
fried disks to lost crtitical files or lost passwords.

> 
> TIA
> GaryT
> 
> 
> 

-- 
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