[SOLVED]I've lost root access!!!

[beowulf62]

I was in admin tools/disk and filesystems trying to work around mounting issues with a pen drive. On my next bootup, I had no eth0, couldn't access Adept and sudo doesn't work. I think I may have changed the mount point on the thumbdrive to /, and I do recall a dialog box stating"There are already things mounted on root. Continue?" Guess what I clicked, LOL!! Anyhow, if I'm beyond the point of rescue, I'd like to backup my home dirctory and reload Hardy 64-bit. Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated!!

Thanks in advance,
beowulf62

[lmilano]

Re: I've lost root access!!!

Mmm. Now you did it, LOL (well, we've all been there, honest :P)

How about booting up in a LIVE CD? You should see the contents of the hard-drive. That could allow you to back up. But also, if you can get to /etc/fstab, you may be able to repair it!

[beowulf62]

Re: I've lost root access!!!

I'm sure I'll be able to get to /etc/fstab, but I don't believe I'll be able to edit the file without root access. I have tried to logon as root, but I can't use my sudo password! Outside of this, I don't remember creating a root password when I installed the OS. I tried the root/root from the Live CD, to no avail. DOH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[lmilano]

Re: I've lost root access!!!

But that's what I mean, you can boot from the live cd, and use the live CD root (sudo) account, that should work! Once you fix fstab, your user account should be back, and you should be able to sudo to do root stuff. You do "sudo -i" and you can do everything as root. I've used Kubuntu the last 3 years without ever even caring about a root password

[The Liquidator]

Re: I've lost root access!!!

Sound advice there, but in case you are unable to rescue it, do you have a separate home partition?

[arochester]

Re: I've lost root access!!!

An alternative to a LiveCD can be found at http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/sudo

[beowulf62]

Re: I've lost root access!!!

Thanks all!!! The Live CD worked splendidly, I had three lines appended to the bottom referencing the thumb drive which I commented out and.............. Voila! I did bookmark the Psychocats link for further study, though. Once again, thanks everyone! Now, how do I mark this as SOLVED

beowulf62

[lmilano]

Re: I've lost root access!!!

Fantastic News!

Now you go to your first post in this thread, you'll see an icon (looks like a pencil writing in a piece of paper) that allows you to edit it, you cliclk and add [SOLVED] to the Subject.

Cheers!