I've lost sudo access and I don't really understand why

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Wed, 18 Mar 2020 21:32:24 +0000, Colin Law wrote:
>Once sorted then create another spare user so you can more easily get
>out of this sort of hole.

I enable the root account for all of my Linux, that's a quite good
"spare user". FWIW that some distros by default disable/d the root
account was never done for security reasons, this is just an urban myth.

On Wed, 18 Mar 2020 22:00:19 +0000, Colin Law wrote:
>On Wed, 18 Mar 2020 at 21:56, David Fletcher wrote:
>> Never been able to understand what is wrong with simply using a text
>> editor (I use joe) on /etc/group ?

When using joe, than use it via vigr.

$ apropos vigr 
vigr (8)             - edit the password or group file
$ echo $EDITOR
nano

Arch Linux and Ubuntu use a different sudo. I need to test how it works
for my Ubuntu install regarding the EDITOR variable.

On Arch Linux running

$ sudo visudo

ignores the EDITOR variable, IOW I get vi.

If I run

$ sudo -i

or

$ su

and then

# vigr

I get the desired editor set by the EDITOR variable, so for me it's
nano.

If I run

# EDITOR=xed vigr

I get xed, IOW it also works with GUI editors.