checking how to reset sudo and root password on Ubuntu? 21.04

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Fri, 2022-10-14 at 16:26 -0400, Robert Heller wrote:
> I understand -- you don't actually need to set a password for root, and 
> *generally* you really should not even try and it is bad practice to even 
> allow root to login.

Hi,

there is nothing bad with enabling the root account. There's nothing bad
with logging in as root, just don't use root to start a X session.

On Fri, 2022-10-14 at 16:26 -0400, Robert Heller wrote:
> You should just boot single user (or with init=/bin/bash) and instead 
> of using the passwd command to set a root password, just fix the 
> ownerships of the files under /etc/.

IIUC the OP run chown recursively in the root directory, so just fixing
the particular files in /etc isn't a good solution.

# # # #  # # # #  # # # #  # # # #

On Fri, 2022-10-14 at 15:13 -0500, Aaron Rainbolt wrote:
> Ouch. There isn't really a good way to fix this with 100% accuracy
> that I know of.

There is a way, just restore from your latest backup ;).

However, I agree, after accidentally running chown recursively it's some
work too fix the owner and group of all files and without doubts we
would miss one or the other important exception..

On Fri, 2022-10-14 at 15:13 -0500, Aaron Rainbolt wrote:
> Once you're booted into recovery mode, select the "root" option to
> drop to a shell, then run "mount -o remount,rw /" to gain write access
> to the root drive. At this point, you can plug in an external drive,
> find the external drive with lsblk, mount it to /mnt, and then use cp
> or rsync to copy your important data to the external drive.

Don't try to rescue data from a broken install by running the broken
install to copy the data. Use a live media that is _not_ broken, mount
the partition/s containing the data and run "cp -ai", "tar --xattrs" or
if you prefer rsync.

Regards,
Ralf

PS: FWIW if a log in doesn't work anymore, it's possible to login from a
live Linux using either chroot or systemd-nspawn to repair a broken
install. In this particular case I wouldn't try to repair the install. I
would restore from a backup. A user that has got no backup should
consider to reinstall the OS.