[SOLVED]No sudo

[houndhen]

Somehow, I won't say how my /etc/sudoers file got messed up. Now when I issue the command sudo su - from the command line I get the following messge:

sudo su -
>>> sudoers file: syntax error, line 22 <<<
sudo: parse error in /etc/sudoers near line 22

I did some searching and ended up here http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/sudo and read this solution.

My problem is that when I installed Kubuntu 8.04 the installation of Grub failed. I ended up using grub from another installed distro and just edited the menu.lst file. Therefore I don't have a menu option for recovery mode.

The solution says:

After you boot into recovery mode, you should be logged in as root. Or, if you set a root password in your installation, you'll be prompted for your root password. Either way--password or not--you'll end up logged in as root.
Once you're there, before you make any changes, it's a good idea to make backup copies of your two corrupt files. Sure, they're incorrect, but they're better than nothing, especially if you accidentally delete the contents of the original files.

I am pretty much lost when dealing with the command line prior to logging in with the gui. So my question is how do I get into recovery mode without a menu option for recovery mode?

Thanks
houndhen

[kubicle]

Re: No sudo

When you're selecting the kernel in grub, press 'e' to edit the boot options, and replace 'quiet splash' (the default options) in the kernel boot line with 'single' (you can also append 'single' to the existing boot options), this should boot you to the single-user (recovery) mode.

[houndhen]

Re: No sudo

Thanks, kubicle. I finally stumbled around (with your help) and got myself out of that jam. Good thing that I had bought a book that had some information about how to use vi. I plan to keep that book handy. I don't and won't use vi unless nothing else will do.

Thanks again,
houndhen

[kubicle]

Re: No sudo

Thanks, kubicle. I finally stumbled around (with your help) and got myself out of that jam. Good thing that I had bought a book that had some information about how to use vi. I plan to keep that book handy. I don't and won't use vi unless nothing else will do.

vi/vim can be a scary experience when you're using it for the first time

You can use nano instead if you need to do CLI editing, the learning curve is not so steep.