Root acess weirdness

[itlarson]

in short: I can get root access by booting in rescue mode, but when I try to get it in as a normal user, (through sudo, or through a x app like adept), I get an incorrect password message. My users all belong to admin, and /etc/sudoers is unchanged from how it was created at install. Please help, -I don't think starting kde as root so I can run adept is the best thing!

[dibl]

Re: Root acess weirdness

Is it just adept? Try

sudo dpkg --configure -a

In a console, if you enter

sudo su

it will turn you into the root user (you'll see the prompt change to "#"). Then when you enter "exit" you go back to your normal user status.

I'm aware that there is a special editor to deal with the /etc/sudoers file, named visudo I think, but happily I've been spared the need for it.

[itlarson]

Re: Root acess weirdness

as with ANY application which requires root access, sudo simply replies "incorrect password". The only workaround is to boot rescue mode. From there you can enter the root password, and then run any command, including starting kde as root.

[Snowhog]

Re: Root acess weirdness

...My users all belong to admin, and /etc/sudoers is unchanged from how it was created at install....

You have multiple user accounts? If you made no changes to how Kubuntu is set up, then only the first user account is granted sudo permissions (when required). So, if the first created user account isn't the one you are using to boot the system, you aren't going to get sudo permissions.

[itlarson]

Re: Root acess weirdness

I can't think why they set it up that way. Getting around that was the idea of adding both users to the "admin" group. It makes no difference anyway, there is no root access when logged in as either user.
This is something which just happened for no reason. I changed the root password a week before, but this may be unrelated. Strangely after changing the password, root access from a normal user continued to recognize the old password, instead of the new one until yesterday, when no root password would be accepted. Once again the rescue boot is the sole exception.

[itlarson]

Re: Root acess weirdness

OK now I get it. sudo takes the password of the user you are logged in as, not the root password. please refer to my new thread- fixing how ubuntu deals with root access.

[Snowhog]

Re: Root acess weirdness

Understanding of the root account "as used by *ubuntu" approach can be read here.

[itlarson]

Re: Root acess weirdness

Thanks - that sorted out most of my problems, however if I use su instead of sudo x apps won't start.

[Snowhog]

Re: Root acess weirdness

While running as the super user, you can not run GUI applications within X. The same link I pointed you to, a bit down the page, has a small topic on "The X Files" which you should read. Basically, su doesn't have rights to use the X environment that is running under the 'users' account. That's why, when running as a normal user, and you open a console, you then want to launch a GUI app, say Kate, you can't use sudo kate to do so, you must run kdesu kate.