Locked out of administrator mode

[Jeff_]

Suddenly, I can't access any settings any more. Whenever I go to System Settings to change something, I click Administrator Mode and it asks me for my password. After I enter it, the border in the window changes to red as it did before, but then quickly disappears and I cannot edit anything. It consistently stops asking for my password at all but doesn't give me access to anything, sudo -k makes the password prompt return but still doesn't allow me access. I can't even use sudo commands in Konsole, as it doesn't ask for my password, but then doesn't do anything I type.

[monte48lowes]

Re: Locked out of administrator mode

What is the output of:

groups

Here is mine:

michael@racing:~$ groups
michael adm dialout cdrom floppy audio dip video plugdev scanner lpadmin netdev powerdev admin

The important one is admin. sudo works for all users who are added to the admin group. Additionally the /etc/sudoers file may be broken. To fix that you will have to reboot into the Recovery Mode and use the command 'visudo'. Recovery mode boots to a command prompt with root access.

Here is what mine looks like:

# /etc/sudoers
#
# This file MUST be edited with the 'visudo' command as root.
#
# See the man page for details on how to write a sudoers file.
# Defaults

Defaults !lecture,tty_tickets,!fqdn

# Uncomment to allow members of group sudo to not need a password
# %sudo ALL=NOPASSWD: ALL

# Host alias specification

# User alias specification

# Cmnd alias specification

# User privilege specification
root ALL=(ALL) ALL

# Members of the admin group may gain root privileges
%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL


Here are some commands you will need for vi.

CTRL-o to save changes, press <Enter> after

CTRL-x to exit

Mike

[Jeff_]

Re: Locked out of administrator mode

The important one is admin. sudo works for all users who are added to the admin group.

Interesting, you're right, I'm not in the admin group. I wonder how I got moved out of it.

jeff@jeff-laptop:~$ groups
jeff adm dialout cdrom floppy audio dip video plugdev scanner lpadmin netdev powerdev

How do I go about adding myself back to it without admin access?

[monte48lowes]

Re: Locked out of administrator mode

Reboot into Recovery Mode:

usermod -a -G admin jeff

Mike

[Jeff_]

[Solved] Locked out of administrator mode

That did it, thanks.