[SOLVED] PLEASE HELP - Unable to login to sudo user

[Guest]

Hi,

I am a newly converted fan of Linux Kubuntu (9.10 Karmic Koala) but I have hit a wall. After the latest update, I am no longer able to login into the system with my sudo user. After entering User ID and PWD at the login screen, the system shows the following error message:

"Configuration file "/home/****/.kde/share/config/knotifyrc" not writeable. Please contact your your system administrator"

"Configuration file "/home/****/.kde/share/config/..." not writeable. Please contact your your system administrator"

and after that I get very strange error in a non KDE UI: "kstartupconfig4 does not exist or fails. The error code is 3."

I have tried various suggestions from the forums reporting a similar error like e.g. try to change ownership of the home folder as it would appear it is a question of permissions set, but all the solutions are based on the use of a sudo command and unfortunately it will not recognize the sudo user's password.

To make sure the password is correct, I have successfully reset it via a restart in Recovery mode following these instructions: http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/resetpassword but this does not have any impact. Sudo user cannot login with the new password either.

I can at least login with another user but this is not an admin user, and every time I try to invoke any Sudo command from a terminal the system will not recognise the Sudo password so it will not work.

I am totally new to Linux and can only speculate but it seems the latest update had something to do with the cryptography and encryption of the hard drive. After the update, the system asked for a re-start but, before doing it, I stupidly chose to change also my sudo user's password via the System Settings. Therefore, my wild guess is that the changes of the update and the new password have messed up the system's permissions.

I really feel I have reached the end of my rope here...Can anyone please help? I would hate to have to make a new installation.

[dibl]

Re: PLEASE HELP - Unable to login to sudo user

Looks like you're having quite a learning experience there.

I'm not sure what you want to do, but you can "become root" for a Konsole session, or in the tty terminal, with

sudo su

and the password that was originally entered for the "admin" user, assuming you haven't changed that one too. As root, you will see the "#" prompt, and you will have the ability to do whatever you wish to your system.

Good luck!

[GreyGeek]

Re: PLEASE HELP - Unable to login to sudo user

What Dibl said, and .... It looks like the update crashed before the rights were reassigned to your ownership.

In a Konsole, navigate to your home account and look for any hidden files, directories or subdirectories which the "vdir" command shows is owned by root. They should be owned by you. Use the chown command to change them back:

sudo chown -R youraccntname:youraccntname /youracctname

Reboot.

[Guest]

Re: PLEASE HELP - Unable to login to sudo user

Dibl and GreyGeek, thanks a lot for your responses guys. Appreciate your help. Nevertheless, I tried your suggestions but the problem was still the same. Any sudo command is useless as the system will not recognise the sudo user's password and would consistently fail login at the prompt.

Fortunately, I have managed to solve it some other way! The answer was just as simple as intuitive. I just changed the password once more (using the recovery start mode and dropping to root shell prompt as in the other times) but this time I changed it back to be the original password I had before applying the package update.

As GreyGreek writes, changing the user's password before the restart probably made the new package miss necessary permission changes. Therefore, some of the system files were still bound by the old password/permission while others operated by the new, changed one. Login in with either one of the passwords was useless because the user could not gain permission to ALL of the system files and authentication failed. By turning the user password to the original one, then all system files have now gain the same access/permission.

Well, anyway, that is my Linux-illiterate way of explaining things. I am sure there is a much more correct explanation but, hey, it works now.

Do you guys think this amounts to a bug?

[GreyGeek]

Re: [SOLVED] PLEASE HELP - Unable to login to sudo user

Do you guys think this amounts to a bug?

Not really. I doubt if it is possible to anticipate all the possible permutations and combinations that Linux users can use and code against them ... like changing a password during an update.